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. 2020 Jun;92(6):589-594.
doi: 10.1002/jmv.25725. Epub 2020 Mar 12.

Evaluation of coronavirus in tears and conjunctival secretions of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection

Jianhua Xia  1 , Jianping Tong  1 , Mengyun Liu  1 , Ye Shen  1 , Dongyu Guo  1
Affiliations

Evaluation of coronavirus in tears and conjunctival secretions of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection

Jianhua Xia et al. J Med Virol. 2020 Jun.

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to assess the presence of novel coronavirus in tears and conjunctival secretions of SARS-CoV-2-infected patients.

Methods: A prospective interventional case series study was performed, and 30 confirmed novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) patients were selected at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University from 26 January 2020 to 9 February 2020. At an interval of 2 to 3 days, tear and conjunctival secretions were collected twice with disposable sampling swabs for reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay.

Results: Twenty-one common-type and nine severe-type NCP patients were enrolled. Two samples of tear and conjunctival secretions were obtained from the only one patient with conjunctivitis yielded positive RT-PCR results. Fifty-eight samples from other patents were all negative.

Conclusion: We speculate that SARS-CoV-2 may be detected in the tears and conjunctival secretions in NCP patients with conjunctivitis.

Keywords: coronavirus; horizontal transmission; infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there are no conflict of interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Conjunctival swab technique used to collect tears and conjunctival secretions. A, Conjunctival swabs; B, universal transport medium with stationary liquid inside
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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