coronavirus: glasses can protect you from coronavirus infection

BEIJING: Daily eyeglass wearers may be less likely to be infected with the new coronavirus, say scientists calling for more large-scale studies to assess the relationship between eye protection and risk of contracting COVID-19.

The single-center study, published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, evaluated 276 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 at Suizhou Zengdu Hospital in China, and found that those who wore glasses for an extended period were relatively uncommon among participants in the study. study.

Based on this observation, the researchers, including those at Nanchang University Second Affiliated Hospital in China, speculated that wearing glasses for more than eight hours a day may protect against the new coronavirus infection.

They hypothesized that this may be because the glasses act as a barrier that reduces the frequency with which people touch their eyes.

“All those who wore glasses for more than eight hours a day were myopia and included 16 of 276 patients. The proportion of people with myopia in Hubei province, according to a previous study, was 31.5 percent,” he noted the study.

According to the researchers, the proportion of people with myopia or myopia was much higher in the general population than among people with COVID-19.

However, citing the drawbacks of the study, the scientists said it was conducted only at a single center with a small sample size, limiting the extent of the results to a larger population.

They believe that the results should be verified by multicenter studies of large samples.

According to the researchers, data on the proportion of eyeglass wearers in the general population that were used as a reference in the study were obtained from the previous literature and are not currently estimated.

This old dataset also included an analysis of people with myopia in the general population in 1985.

They said the myopia rate seen in this data set also included a small number of people with myopia who did not wear glasses.

“Information about these people was missing and this partly affected the integrity and validity of our data,” the scientists noted.

In a comment attached to the study, epidemiologist Lisa L. Maragakis of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the US said the results can be misleading due to confusing variables.

Maragakis said there may be an alternative explanation for the findings “if, for example, wearing glasses is associated with another unknown and unmeasured factor associated with COVID-19 risk.”

“Although it is tempting to conclude from this study that everyone should wear glasses, goggles or a face shield in public to protect themselves and their eyes from COVID-19, from an epidemiological perspective, we must be careful not to infer a causal relationship. from a single observational study, “he wrote in the comment.

But the epidemiologist said it is plausible that the glasses could serve as a barrier against such transmission from contaminated droplets or hands.

“Although glasses do not provide the same degree of eye protection as glasses or a face shield, they can serve as a partial barrier that reduces virus inoculum in a manner similar to what has been seen with cloth masks,” he noted. .

Maragakis urged caution in interpreting the study, adding that wearing goggles, a face shield, or even glasses could pose an increased risk of touching your eyes more frequently and “potentially contaminating them by removing, replacing or adjusting eye protection. , especially if a person is not used to using them. ”

He said more studies are needed to determine if there are any benefits to wearing glasses or other forms of eye protection in public settings, in addition to physical distancing and wearing masks to avoid contracting the virus.