Absent from the screens since January 3, the presenter of the 1 p.m. news from TF1 Marie-Sophie Lacarrau will finally find his chair this Monday, May 16. Her health problems are finally behind her, as she explains in Le Parisien: “JI have the green light from Professor Éric Gabison, deputy head of department and specialist in corneal pathologies at the Rothschild Foundation in Paris”.
It was indeed due to a (rare) corneal infection that the journalist was absent from the screens: amoebic keratitis that affected his right eye and forced her to live in complete darkness for long weeks before gradually re-educating her eye and reaccustoming it to light.
Amoebic keratitis: what is it?
Keratitis is an inflammation of the cornea which can have multiple causes such as too much sun (we then speak of photo-keratitis), conjunctivitis, wearing contact lenses for too long. But it can also be caused by a bacterium, a virus or a fungus. This is the case with amoebic keratitis, which is caused by amoebas of the species Acanthamoebapresent in sea or swimming pool water.
This rare inflammation mainly affects people who wear contact lenses and bathe with them. The amoebae indeed remain present between the lens and the cornea and can even colonize the lens case. It is for this main reason that ophthalmologists point out that wearing contact lenses for aquatic activities is strictly prohibited.
Amoebic keratitis: how is it treated?
Keratitis causes very painful lesions of the cornea, the feeling of having sand or even broken glass in the eyes. And as the disease progresses and the deeper layers of the cornea are invaded by Acanthamoeba, it becomes cloudy and the vision becomes increasingly cloudy.
At the start of treatment, antimicrobial eye drops should be applied intensively to the infected eye every hour or two. Gradually, as the infection heals, the treatment becomes less intensive. But it can last from 6 months to a year at the risk of seeing the infection recur.
The treatment takes long weeks because once encysted, these amoebas take time to be dislodged. In addition to care with eye drops, the patient must remain in complete darkness, wear sunglasses even inside the home, and stay away from any source of light (therefore from any screen), at the risk of permanently losing vision.
Source :Basics of Parasitic/Amebic Keratitis, Centers for diseases control and preventionMay 2021,
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