NJ doctor alerted CDC of ReNu infection risk
When New Jersey ophthalmologist David Chu got his first case of the rare fungal eye infection Fusarium keratitis last month, he didn’t think anything serious was going on. “I thought, ‘This is interesting,’ and made a mental note,” Dr. Chu says. But when a second and then a third case came to his office over the next few weeks, he knew that something was up.
Fusarium keratitis infections usually occur when the eye is injured after coming into contact with contaminated soil. Dr. Chu’s practice has seen only one case of Fusarium keratitis symptoms over the last three years. So when he saw three cases within a matter of weeks, he began to suspect that something else must be causing the infections.
Dr. Chu began e-mailing colleagues, who told him about a recent outbreak of Fusarium keratitis symptoms among contact lens wearers in Singapore and Hong Kong; nearly all of these patients had used Bausch & Lomb’s ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution. Health officials in these two countries forced Bausch & Lomb to issue a ReNu recall to prevent further Fusarium keratitis cases. After speaking with his patients, Dr. Chu found that they, too, had used ReNu with MoistureLoc.
A colleague of Dr. Chu’s contacted Bausch & Lomb on his behalf, he says, “but it didn’t sound like the company had very much information about what happened in Asia. They claimed these were the first cases [of Fusarium keratitis symptoms] they had heard of in the U.S.”
In order to learn more about the possible link between Fusarium keratitis symptoms and ReNu with MoistureLoc, Dr. Chu contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 8. Acting on his information, the CDC launched an investigation into ReNu with MoistureLoc. So far, the agency has found at least 109 cases of Fusarium keratitis symptoms nationwide. Of the 30 cases about which the CDC has detailed information, 28 were contact lens wearers; 26 of these patients could remember which contact lens solution they used, and all named a ReNu product.
In response to the growing evidence of a link between ReNu with MoistureLoc and the Fusarium keratitis outbreak, Bausch & Lomb issued a U.S. ReNu recall on April 10. Many retail chains, including Walgreen's and CVS, had already pulled ReNu with MoistureLoc from their shelves once they became aware of its possible infection risks.