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One should watch the consequences of infection for the visual organs.
It has long been known that coronaviruses cause infections of the respiratory tract. It has also long been known that other organs can be affected. There have been some reports of neurological impairments and visual disturbances during or after an infection. The virus could be detected in the retina in several studies on retinal biopsies of people who died of the corona.
In addition, there are numerous indications that coronaviruses can enter the retina of the eye and cause damage there. It was unclear which coronaviruses infect retinal structures and whether the retinal damage is a direct or indirect consequence of a retina infection. The daily newspaper Die Welt reports on this.
Retina model
A team of researchers led by Thomas Rauen and Hans Schöler from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and the virologist Stephan Ludwig from the Westphalian Wilhelms University to clarify these questions experimented with a retina model, a so-called retina organoid. This allowed them to study the interactions of the model retina made of human reprogrammed stem cells with the Sars-CoV-2 virus.
The researchers showed that the viruses primarily infected retinal ganglion cells in the retina and light-sensing cells. Furthermore, the scientists proved that coronaviruses could also multiply in these two cell types.
“This is a new finding,” the researchers report, and from this, they deduce the need to keep an eye on the possible consequences for the eyes of long-covid patients. Regular examinations could be helpful.
- source: kurier.at/picture: Image by Juraj Varga from Pixabay
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