--- title: Contact Lenses Fill Your Eyes With Skin-Like Bacteria description: Popping in contact lenses changes the eye’s bacteria by making it more similar to skin bugs, according to a study published in mBio canonical: https://time.com/4266427/contact-lenses-bacteria/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-22T14:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T16:05:04.055Z article:section: Health og:title: Contact Lenses Fill Your Eyes With Bacteria og:description: Popping in contact lenses changes the eye’s bacteria by making it more similar to skin bugs, according to a study published in mBio og:url: https://time.com/4266427/contact-lenses-bacteria/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb62f67b05d7bf950/69888bf6a988ca8e096b715b/contact-lenses-eyes-bacteria-illo.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2500 og:image:height: 1406 og:image:alt: contact-lenses-eyes-bacteria-illo og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Contact Lenses Fill Your Eyes With Bacteria twitter:description: Popping in contact lenses changes the eye’s bacteria by making it more similar to skin bugs, according to a study published in mBio twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb62f67b05d7bf950/69888bf6a988ca8e096b715b/contact-lenses-eyes-bacteria-illo.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Contact Lenses Fill Your Eyes With Bacteria > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Mar 22, 2016 2:00 PM UTC  Getty Images; Illustration by Lauren Margit Jones for TIME  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Mar 22, 2016 2:00 PM UTC Scientists have learned plenty about the colonies of bacteria living in our gut: how they protect against pathogens, and [how we can change them](http://time.com/3936636/diet-gut-bacteria/), for better and for worse, by what we put into our bodies. A similar thing seems to happen at another unexpectedly bug-filled body site: the eyeball. Popping in contact lenses changes the eye’s bacteria by making it more skin-like, according to a new study published in the journal [_mBio_](http://mbio.asm.org/). In the study, which built upon the early results of research [last year](http://time.com/3902216/contact-lens-bacteria/), researchers from the New York University School of Medicine wanted to see what was living on the ocular microbiota of 58 people—some who wore contacts lenses and some who did not. The team swabbed the surfaces of the eyeball, as well as the skin under the eye, and sequenced the bacterial communities. **MORE**: [The Science of Crying](http://time.com/4254089/science-crying/) The researchers found that contact lenses changed the bacterial composition of the eye surface to make it more similar to skin: meaning lens-wearers had a greater abundance of skin bacteria including _Pseudomonas_, _Acinetobacter_, _Methylobacterium_ and _Lactobacillus_ and lower abundances of _Haemophilus_, _Streptococcus_, _Staphylococcus_ and _Corynebacterium_ than people who didn’t wear contacts. “Wearing contact lenses is known to increase the risk of microbial keratitis and other inflammatory eye conditions,” says senior study author Maria Dominguez-Bello, an associate professor of medicine at New York University, in an email. Still, it’s too soon to say whether these microbial changes are responsible for compromised eye health. “Future studies are needed to determine the role of the microbiome in the increased risk for eye infections in contact lens wearers,” she says. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4266427/contact-lenses-bacteria/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4266427/contact-lenses-bacteria/"},"headline":"Contact Lenses Fill Your Eyes With Bacteria","datePublished":"2016-03-22T14:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T16:05:04.055Z","description":"But scientists don't yet know if that's necessarily a bad thing","url":"https://time.com/4266427/contact-lenses-bacteria/","keywords":["Research","Bacteria","microbiome","gut bacteria","skin"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb62f67b05d7bf950/69888bf6a988ca8e096b715b/contact-lenses-eyes-bacteria-illo.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb62f67b05d7bf950/69888bf6a988ca8e096b715b/contact-lenses-eyes-bacteria-illo.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"contact-lenses-eyes-bacteria-illo","caption":"Contact Lenses Fill Your Eyes With Skin-Like Bacteria","creditText":"Getty Images; Illustration by Lauren Margit Jones for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/research/","name":"Research"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4266427/contact-lenses-bacteria/","name":"Contact Lenses Fill Your Eyes With Bacteria"}}]}] ```