Eye scan could identify whether patients will have ‘long COVID’

• Around one in 10 people infected by COVID will have long-lasting symptoms, known as “long COVID.”
• A new study suggests that an eye scan, called corneal confocal microscopy (CCM), can detect nerve damage that could identify whether COVID patients will be “long-haulers.”
• Study author Professor Rayaz Malik suggested using CCM “as a rapid objective ophthalmic test to evaluate patients with long COVID.”

An eye scan can identify whether a patient could have “long COVID,” a new study suggests.

Doctors at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar describe long COVID as a range of symptoms, unexplained by an alternative diagnosis, that persist for more than four weeks after the acute phase of the infection has passed.

Around one in 10 people infected by the virus will have long COVID.

Scientists explained that the long-term impact of the virus could manifest in nerve fiber loss and an increase in key immune cells on the surface of the eye.

They added that such changes are more evident among patients with neurological symptoms, such as headache, dizziness, loss of taste and smell, numbness, and neuropathic pain.

A National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) questionnaire was completed by 40 people who had recovered from COVID-19 infection between one and six months earlier. In 22 out of 40 patients (55 percent), neurological symptoms were present at four and 12 weeks, respectively, according to the findings published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

The participants’ corneas were scanned using corneal confocal microscopy (CCM), a real-time, non-invasive, high-resolution imaging laser technique. Researchers looked for small nerve fiber damage and the density of dendritic cells, which are involved in the body’s primary immune system response.

These corneal scans were then compared with those of 30 healthy people who hadn’t been infected by COVID.

Patients who suffered neurological symptoms for four weeks after recovery from acute COVID-19 had greater corneal nerve fiber damage and loss and higher numbers of dendritic cells, compared to healthy participants.

Those who had COVID but didn’t have neurological symptoms had comparable numbers of corneal nerve fibers with uninfected participants but had higher numbers of dendritic cells.

Study author Professor Rayaz Malik stated, “The questionnaire responses indicative of long COVID symptoms correlated strongly with corneal nerve fiber loss.”

While the study may be the first of its kind, it is limited in that it’s only observational and can’t establish cause, and only involved a small number of participants.

Malik suggested that CCM can be used “as a rapid objective ophthalmic test to evaluate patients with long COVID.”

Source: Study Finds