Contaminated Eye Drops Linked to Rising Death Toll in Outbreak

The death toll has risen in an out­break linked to con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed eye drops, weeks after the U.S. Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) warned med­ical per­son­nel to stop using pop­u­lar brands of eye drops.

As of March 14, 68 patients in 16 U.S. states have been diag­nosed with an infec­tion caused by a rare strain of drug-resis­tant Pseudomonas aerug­i­nosa, with two addi­tion­al deaths report­ed. Eight peo­ple have lost their sight, and four oth­ers have had to have at least one eye sur­gi­cal­ly removed.

More than half of the cas­es were asso­ci­at­ed with four dif­fer­ent health­care facil­i­ties, with many infect­ed peo­ple hav­ing used preser­v­a­tive-free eye drops called “Ezri­Care Arti­fi­cial Tears” man­u­fac­tured by Indi­an phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Glob­al Pharma.

Pseudomonas aerug­i­nosa is a ver­sa­tile bac­teri­um that can grow any­where from jet fuel to dis­tilled water, mak­ing it a per­sis­tent con­t­a­m­i­nant in many health­care set­tings due to its abil­i­ty to form biofilms and hide from com­mon disinfectants.

The pathogen that caused this infec­tion was a new­ly dis­cov­ered car­bapen­em antibi­ot­ic-resis­tant strain of Pseudomonas aerug­i­nosa (CRPA) with two addi­tion­al enzymes (cod­ed as VIM and GES) that make it par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to treat. This organ­ism, called VIM-GES-CRPA, is resis­tant to var­i­ous β‑lactam antibiotics.

One 72-year-old man devel­oped an infec­tion and was severe­ly impaired in his right eye. Despite receiv­ing spe­cif­ic antibi­otics every hour, his infec­tion still per­sists, and his vision has not improved. Trag­i­cal­ly, a 68-year-old Mia­mi woman had to have her infect­ed right eye removed last Sep­tem­ber after buy­ing eye drops to ease the irri­ta­tion caused by wear­ing her con­tact lenses.

Doc­tors ini­tial­ly thought a donat­ed cornea would save her vision, but it was too late by the time of surgery. The infec­tion was caused by a corneal lesion that was treat­ed with reg­u­lar broad-spec­trum antibi­otics, but the patien­t’s con­di­tion con­tin­ued to deteriorate. 

This trag­ic inci­dent, along with oth­ers, high­lights the impor­tance of ensur­ing the safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of med­ical prod­ucts and the need for prompt action in response to outbreaks.