Your contact lenses are probably disgusting

Wearing contact lenses could harm eye bacteria, according to a new study by researchers at New York University's Langone Medical Center.

"Our research clearly shows that putting a foreign object, such as a contact lens, on the eye is not a neutral act," senior researcher Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, PhD said in a news release.

The study, which Time reports was presented at the annual meeting for the American Society for Microbiology, compared colonies of living bacteria in lens-wearers and non-wearers. Those who wore contact lenses had bacteria similar to that of bacteria typically found on skin, perhaps because finger skin bacteria gets transferred to lenses when people handle them.

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The sample size is quite small — 20 people — and researchers say there's more work left to be done before they could suggest changes to eye care.