An outside researcher hired by Bausch & Lomb says that whatever is causing the recent outbreak among contact lens wearers of potentially blinding fungal eye infections, it is increasingly likely that consumers are not getting the microbes directly from the company's lens cleaning solution.
Tests have shown that at least four different strains of the microbe, the Fusarium fungus, from three genetically distinct families are involved, the researcher, David Geiser, director of the Fusarium Research Center at Pennsylvania State University, said in an interview on Friday.
Two of the strains are commonly found in sinks and drains, according to Geiser, a leading expert on Fusarium who has been retained by Bausch to provide independent assessments of the genetic make-up of microbes collected from victims and their lens gear.
The findings suggest that there is no single source of contamination for the infections, which have been reported primarily in Singapore, Hong Kong and the US among users of Bausch & Lomb's ReNu with MoistureLoc lens solution coming from a plant in Greenville, South Carolina.
US Food and Drug Administration officials declined to comment Friday on Geiser's assessment. But the agency's Web site posted an update saying that while it continued to confirm cases of Fusarium infections associated with products other than ReNu With MoistureLoc, "Our interest in the MoistureLoc product is based on the disproportionate number of cases of Fusarium keratitis associated with ReNu With MoistureLoc compared to the overall product market share."
As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta had received 195 reports of Fusarium eye infections occurring in the US since last June, 102 of which had been confirmed in follow-up investigations.
"At this point, it is too early in the investigation to say whether a particular product or solution may be responsible for the outbreak," the CDC said.
On Tuesday, when the confirmed number had been 86 cases, the CDC said it had verified that 56 involved contact lens users and that 54 of them had used ReNu brand solutions -- mostly MoistureLoc -- from the Bausch factory in Greenville.
So far, though, neither Bausch nor federal regulators have found signs of Fusarium contamination at the factory, in production samples retained from lots shipped to customers or in unopened bottles returned by retailers, according to Praveen Tyle, the company's senior vice president for global research and development and chief scientific officer. And some countries that received MoistureLoc from Greenville, like Indonesia and the Philippines, have not reported any unusual increase in the infection rate.
"We are getting to the point where we think there isn't one answer to this," said Tyle, who is based at Bausch's headquarters in Rochester, New York.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
RSS