By Gillian Mohney
The Zika virus (click here) has been found in fluid around the eyes of some patients, shedding new light on how the virus affects healthy adults, according to a study published today in Journal for the American Medical Association Ophthalmology.
The eyes of six patients infected in South America were swabbed by researchers from the Guangdong Provincial Institute of Public Health in China. When they tested their eye fluids, they found Zika virus RNA.
"Here we have some evidence when the adult is infected, it would appear that highly specialized neural tissue is infected," Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical School, told ABC News. He said the next step would be examining if the virus caused any vision problems.
The virus was known to cause severe eye damage in developing fetuses. Babies born with microcephaly have exhibited symptoms of eye infection, including lesions in the eye. But it was unclear if the development of microcephaly or the Zika virus itself led to the lesions.
Until now, it was also unclear if the virus was present in the eyes of adults....
