Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 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.

PubMed Disclaimer

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

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Lu H, Stratton CW, Tang YW. Outbreak of pneumonia of unknown etiology In Wuhan, China: the mystery and the miracle. J Med Virol. 2020;92:401‐402. 10.1002/jmv.25678 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zhang L, Shen FM, Chen F, Lin Z. Origin and evolution of the 2019 novel coronavirus. Clin Infect Dis. 2020:ciaa112. 10.1093/cid/ciaa112 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. World Health Organization (WHO) . Novel coronavirus (2019‐nCoV) situation report—3 (23 January 2020). Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2020. https://www.who.int/docs/default‐source/coronaviruse/situation‐reports/2...
    1. World Health Organization (WHO) . Statement on the Second Meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee regarding the outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019‐nCoV). Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2020. https://www.who.int/news‐room/detail/30‐01‐2020‐statement‐on‐the‐second‐...
    1. World Health Organization (WHO) . Novel Coronavirus (2019‐nCoV) Situation Report—29 (18 February 2020). Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2020. https://www.who.int/docs/default‐source/coronaviruse/situation‐reports/2...

MeSH terms