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    Exophiala Xenobiotica on a Contact Lens

    By Atalie C. Thompson, MD, MPH, Niaz Banaei, MD, and Douglas Fredrick, MD, and photographed by Huynh Van, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, Calif.
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    Retinal Astrocytoma

    A 45-year-old man had been continuously wearing his colored contact lenses (purchased 7 weeks prior) for the past 3 weeks. His visual acuity was 20/40 OU with correction. A black fungus was visualized on his left contact lens (Figs. 1A-1D). Polymerase chain reaction of cultures from the lens identified the “black yeast” as Exophiala xenobiotica. Fungal culture stained with lactophenol blue showed conidiophores accumulating at the tip of the annellides and sliding down their length (Fig. 2; original magnification ×400).

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