Ocular manifestations and SARS-CoV-2 detection in tears and conjunctival scrape from non-severe COVID-19 patients
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Yun Li. Department of Ophthalmology, the 2nd Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410011, Hunan Province, China. yun.li@csu.edu.cn

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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81300798); Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (No.2018JJ3737).

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    Abstract:

    AIM: To explore the ocular features of corona virus disease (COVID)-19 and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2 detection in tears and conjunctival scrapes in non-severe COVID-19 patients. METHODS: This is a multicenter observational clinical study with no intervention conducted from Jan 25th to March 1st, 2020. Clinical data and samples of tears and conjunctival scraping were collected in consecutive laboratory-confirmed, non-severe COVID-19 patients from three hospitals. COVID-19 virus was analyzed by real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) kits. RESULTS: Totally 255 laboratory-confirmed, non-severe COVID-19 patients were recruited for ocular manifestation investigation. Of them, 54.9% were females, with a mean age of 49.4y. None of the patients has evidence of uveitis; 11 patients (4.3%) complained of mild asthenopia; 2 (0.8%) had mild conjunctival congestion and serous secretion. Twenty-five of them had performed tears and conjunctival scrape for COVID-19 virus detection, with 4 yield possible positive results in the nucleoprotein gene. One of them were asymptomatic with normal chest CT and positive pharyngeal swab result. CONCLUSION: Ocular manifestations are neither common nor specific in non-severe COVID-19 patients. Meanwhile, COVID-19 virus nucleotides can be detected in the tears and conjunctival scrape samples, warranting further research on the transmissibility by the ocular route.

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Bing Jiang, Shao-Jie Li, Wen-Long Wang, et al. Ocular manifestations and SARS-CoV-2 detection in tears and conjunctival scrape from non-severe COVID-19 patients. Int J Ophthalmol, 2021,14(8):1133-1137

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Publication History
  • Received:June 17,2020
  • Revised:January 20,2021
  • Adopted:
  • Online: June 28,2021
  • Published: