Eye-rubbing, poor hygiene to blame for Chinese man’s severe mite-induced vision loss

Doctor examines Hubei man’s eyelids, estimates more than a thousand tiny creatures are infesting his eyelash follicles A Chinese man suffered from vision loss after over a thousand mites infected his eyes, and it turned out that his life habits were to blame. The 36-year-old man in central Hubei province, surnamed Yu, experienced eye discomfort. His eyes felt dry, itchy and sticky for six months. He rubbed his eyes more vigorously, and bought eye drops, but they did not help. He then experienced a sharp decline in vision. He had his eyes checked at a clinic and was diagnosed with demodex blepharitis, an eyelid inflammation caused by an overgrowth of demodex mites. His doctor, Qin Jiao, found that his eyelash follicles were teeming with demodex mites. She randomly selected eight eyelashes from each eye for observation, and found chilling results: each hair follicle contained eight or nine wriggling mites. Based on the fact that a single eye has around 100 to 150 eyelashes, Qin estimated that the number of demodex mites in Yu’s eyes could reach from the hundreds to over a thousand.

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