RESEARCH ARTICLE


Assessment of Coronavirus in the Conjunctival Tears in Pediatric Patients with Asymptomatic COVID-19 Infection in Sohag Government, Egypt



Hany Mahmoud1, *, Ahmed Radwan2, Amr El Rashidy3, Hesham M. Hefny4, Amal H. Ali5, Amr Mounir1
1 Department of Ophthalmology, Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt
2 Department of Rheumatology, Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt
3 Sohag Tropical Hospital, Tropical Medicine, Sohag, Egypt
4 Department of Clinical Pathology, Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt
5 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Aswan University, Tingar, Egypt

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2021
Volume: 15
First Page: 83
Last Page: 88
Publisher ID: TOOPHTJ-15-83
DOI: 10.2174/1874364102115010083

Article History:

Received Date: 18/12/2020
Revision Received Date: 18/1/2021
Acceptance Date: 28/2/2021
Electronic publication date: 21/05/2021
Collection year: 2021

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Creative Commons License
© 2021 Mahmoud et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at Department of Ophthalmology, Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt; Tel: 01024368111; E-mail: drhanymahmoud@gmail.com


Abstract

Objective:

The present study aims to evaluate coronavirus shedding in the tears of asymptomatic pediatric COVID-19 positive patients.

Methods:

A prospective interventional study that included a total of 145 pediatric asymptomatic COVID-19 patients hospitalized from 17th May 2020 to 16th July 2020 in Sohag Tropical Hospital. On admission, all of them were COVID-19 positive detected through nasopharyngeal swab. They were in intimate contact with positive symptomatic COVID-19 patients before testing and admission. Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was done for tears samples at an interval of 5 days after admission and twice before discharge.

Results:

Of the 145 asymptomatic pediatric COVID-19 positive patients, no one showed ocular or systemic manifestations. They were silent carriers. Ten were positive for tears sample on admission. They became negative for nasopharyngeal and tear samples before discharge.

Conclusion:

Pediatric positive COVID-19 patients can shed coronavirus through their tears. Even among asymptomatic patients, transmission through tears is possible.

Keywords: Asymptomatic, Conjunctiva, Coronavirus, Pediatric, RT-PCR, Tears.