A woman had been plagued by an uncomfortable and itchy sensation in her eye for several days so she finally decided to visit an eye doctor. He found something quite unusual and very uncommon; eye lice in her lashes. The woman, Ms. Zhang, hails from Northeast China and had suffered from a stroke two days prior to seeking medical help for her eye problem.
She’d had an annoying, itchy problem with her eyes for some time and ignored it until it became unbearable. At her request, her son inspected her eye and he immediately noticed a few extremely tiny, crab-like bugs crawling around on her lashes. Her eye doctor confirmed and diagnosed her eye lice problem and promptly removed them with a pair of fine forceps. When it was all done, he had pulled over twenty of the tiny parasites off her eyelid.
While most people know about head lice, the tiny insects that live on the scalp, few people are aware of eye lice. Eye lice are almost microscopic, white parasites that live in the eyebrows and eyelashes of people where they feed off of blood and skin.
Adults will attach themselves to the skin around a lash, lay eggs which are called nits, and 6-10 days later they hatch. After 15 days the nits are full grown and they start to lay more eggs, thus causing an infestation. Symptoms of eye lice include sudden and extreme itchiness on your eyelids, tearing, feeling tired or ill, small red spots from lice bites, eye redness, and conjunctivitis.
To treat the problem, a doctor has to remove them individually and often will prescribe an antibiotic which suffocates the lice. Harsh, commercial chemicals are not used since they can easily hurt or damage sensitive eyes. This type of lice is very uncommon and most often stems from contact with either pets or eyelash extensions. Hopefully, this is the only case of it you will ever see in your lifetime, it looks really gross and painful.
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