COVID-2019 Associated with Acquired Monocular Blindness

ABSTRACT

Objective

We documented an older female with Coronavirus(CoV) Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and concomitant acquired monocular blindness. We examined this phenomenon in order to understand COVID-19 better.

Methods

We observed an older female with COVID-19 and concomitant acquired monocular blindness. The following indicators were monitored during the course of the disease: ocular examinations, flash visual evoked potential examination, a blood test for COVID-19 IgM antibodies, as well as nasopharyngeal swab and tear sample tests for COVID-19 nucleic acid.

Results

The patient’s visual acuity for the left eye was NLP and the intraocular pressure was 51 mmHg. Keratic precipitates similar to mutton-fat were spread over the corneal endothelium of the left eye. The funduscopic examination of the patient’s left eye revealed severe retinal arterial ischemia, and the color of the retina was off-white. Compared to the right eye, the flash visual evoked potential examination revealed a moderate decrease in P2 wave amplitude for the left eye. A blood test was positive for COVID-19 IgM antibodies, and a nasopharyngeal swab test taken for COVID-19 nucleic acid was positive on May 4, 2020. A sample of the patient’s tears was taken, and the nucleic acid test for COVID-19 was still positive two weeks later.

Conclusions

Our study was the first to find that acute viral retinitis could occur in patients with COVID-19 and severe blindness could be associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Therefore, physicians should consider the possibility of coronavirus infection in patients with an abnormal fundus or suddenly vision loss.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• virus
• retinitis
• optic neuritis
• blindness

Competing interests

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The clinical observation process followed the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University. The patient signed the written informed consents form for participation. And written informed consent was obtained from the patient.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the COVID-19 Emergency Response Project of Wuhan Science and Technology Department [2020020201010018].