Nerve Damage In Eyes May Help Identify Patients With ‘Long Covid’, Says Research

Doctors may be able to identify whether a person has long Covid by determining a loss of nerve fibers and an increase of immune cells in their cornea.

Representational Picture (AFP)

New Delhi: Eyes can also point out to symptoms of the deadly virus infection even after patients have recovered from the illness. If you go by the latest study, then researchers have identified a link between changes to a person’s cornea and the chances of developing long Covid.

According to the researchers, in the future doctors may be able to identify whether a person has long Covid by determining a loss of nerve fibers and an increase of immune cells in their cornea.

What is long Covid?

Covid-19 is basically a respiratory disease in which patients can exhibit symptoms that are non-existent to severe requiring hospitalization. Despite primarily being a respiratory disease, the disease also affect other parts of the body. A study accepted for publication in the journal BMJ Open found that disease can also impact others organs as well. It is one of the key reasons of the estimated 1 in 10 people developing long Covid, where symptoms persist for weeks or months after the patient has come out of the severe phase of Covid-19.

Symptoms of long Covid can include a tight chest, coughing, tiredness, palpitations, feeling breathless, muscle pain, or difficulty focusing.

What does the latest study suggest?

Researchers from Turkey and Qatar in their latest study published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology noted that nerve fibre loss and an increase in key immune cells on the surface of the eye, known as cornea, could be a potential identifying feature of long Covid.

It is because nerve fibres, which are referred to as thin wires branching off from specific nerve cells in the body, relay sensory information about pain among others to the central nervous system. In case of damage to such fibres, there can be a wide array of symptoms.

As per the findings, changes in the cornea were found to be mostly evident among those with neurological symptoms such as loss of taste and smell, headache, dizziness, numbness and neuropathic pain after being infected with Covid-19.