Safe disinfection of contact lenses after contamination with HTLV-III

The human T-lymphotropic retrovirus type III (HTLV-III), the etiological agent of AIDS, has recently been detected in tears, cornea, and conjunctiva, raising the possibility of transmission of HTLV-III via contact lens trial sets used in routine fitting. We evaluated the ability of several contact lens cleaning solutions, with or without conditioning or disinfecting solutions, to disinfect contact lenses experimentally contaminated with HTLV-III. Following attempted disinfection, the lenses were cultured for residual HTLV-III on Hg cells for 28 days. Cultures without characteristic cytopathic effects, reverse transcriptase activity, and HTLV-III-specific antigen expression were considered negative. We found that all commercially available cleaning solutions tested were able to disinfect contact lenses exposed to HTLV-III.