Researchers analyzed eyeball tissue from 10 donors who had COVID-19 when they died.
The virus that causes COVID-19 has been found in the eye tissues of those who have died from the disease. By looking at tissue samples from deceased donors, researchers found the virus was present in the eye itself—not just in the tears, as had previously been identified by scientists. The study, which appears on the pre-print website medRxiv, has not been peer reviewed by a panel of experts, so findings should be interpreted with caution. However, the findings could have implications for eye tissue donation, which millions of people around the world require. Researchers led by Onkar B. Sawant, from the Center for Vision and Eye Banking Research at Eversight, Ohio, analyzed 132 sets of ocular tissues from 33 deceased donors after they were rejected by the Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) as they had tested positive for COVID-19. Of these,10 donors were found to have tested positive post-mortem, and the tissue samples were narrowed down to 33. From the 20 eyes recovered from the 10 donors, the researchers found evidence of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, in various parts of the eye. This included the posterior and anterior corneal, and the vitreous—the gel like fluid that fills the eye. They also found SARS-CoV-2 spike and envelope proteins in the epithelial layer of the corneas. The team says the study shows a “small but noteworthy prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in ocular tissues from COVID-19 donors.
