Dozens Of People Reporting Vision Loss After Getting Tattoo

Roughly 40 people in Australia are dealing with vision loss after getting a tattoo. The rare condition stems from a reaction to tattoo ink and it's called, "tattoo-associated uveitis."

Getting a tattoo is a decision that takes a lot of thinking. You want it to be something that's important to you and has meaning--and you want it to be something special because it's going to be permanent. Sure, problems can arise when you get a tattoo. Maybe it gets infected, maybe it doesn't look how you hoped, or maybe it leads to a rare eye condition. PEOPLE says that 40 people have now been diagnosed with tattoo-associated uveitis and tattoos are reportedly to blame. Symptoms of the condition, which is a form of eye inflammation, include pain, blurred vision, and potential sight loss, per PEOPLE.

Sounds like some of the patients dealing with this were confused and couldn't figure out what the problem was once they started experiencing symptoms. That is until it was traced to tattoo ink. Tattoo-associated uveitis is caused by a presumed immune reaction to tattoo ink, per PEOPLE.

Ophthalmologist Josephine Richards tells ABC, "We do not know why the eye gets caught in the crossfire. There is something about the immune reaction that targets the eye. I only became aware of it about four or five years ago, and then...I had all these patients all of a sudden," via PEOPLE. Black tattoo ink seems to be creating the most inflammation.

This sounds painful and I don't want to go through that. Guess I have another reason not to get a tattoo. Read more from PEOPLE here.