UAlberta clinician-scientists identify pink eye as possible primary symptom of COVID-19

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/uoaf-uci061820.php

News Release 18-Jun-2020
University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry


A case of pink eye is now reason to be tested for COVID-19, according to University of Alberta researchers.

Coughing, fever and difficulty breathing are common symptoms of the illness, but a recent case study involving an Edmonton woman and published in the Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology has determined that conjunctivitis and keratoconjunctivitis can also be primary symptoms.

In March, a 29-year-old woman arrived at the Royal Alexandra Hospital's Eye Institute of Alberta with a severe case of conjunctivitis and minimal respiratory symptoms. After the patient had undergone several days of treatment with little improvement--and after it had been determined that the woman had recently returned home from Asia--a resident ordered a COVID-19 test. The test came back positive.

"What is interesting in this case, and perhaps very different to how it had been recognized at that specific time, was that the main presentation of the illness was not a respiratory symptom. It was the eye," said Carlos Solarte, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the U of A.

"There was no fever and no cough, so we weren't led to suspect COVID-19 at the beginning. We didn't know it could present primarily with the eye and not with the lungs."

According to Solarte, academic studies at the outset of the pandemic identified conjunctivitis as a secondary symptom in about 10 to 15 per cent of COVID-19 cases. Since then, scientists have gained greater knowledge of how the virus can transmit through and affect the body's mucous membrane system, of which the conjunctiva--the clear, thin membrane that covers the front surface of the eye--is an extension.

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