A new study suggests that wearing glasses every day may reduce the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus.
Researchers in China found that COVID-19 patients were five times less likely to frame than the general population.
The team at Nanchang University’s Second Affiliated Hospital said they believe these ACE-2 receptors, which allow the virus to enter and infect human cells, can be found in the eyes.
These findings also provide further evidence as to why health precursor workers should wear eye protection and pay more attention to preventive measures such as frequent hand washing and avoiding touching their face.
A new study found that 5.8% of cor00 coronavirus patients wore glasses eight hours a day, compared to 51.5% of people in Hubei Province. Pictured: A man wears an American and Puerto Rico flag mask in New York City, September 2020
This suggests that people who wear frames are about five times less likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than the general population. Image: Healthcare worker, a patient is treated in the COVID-19 unit at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, in July 2020.
For the study, published in JMA Ophthalmology, the team looked at 276 patients diagnosed with Covid-19 between January 27 and March 13.
Thirty patients wore glasses (10.9 percent), including 16 vision and 14 far-sighted cases.
None of those diagnosed with the virus wore contact lenses or underwent refractive surgery to improve their vision.
A total of 16 patients, all visible, were long-term wearers, defined as wearing glasses for more than eight hours a day, accounting for 8.8 percent.
For the general population, researchers looked at the study of students aged seven to 22 in Hubei Province decades ago, in which 31.5 percent wore glasses for television.
At the time of publication, those students would have been 42 and 57 years old, close to the 31-year-old age of COVID-19 patients.
This means that the general population is 5.4 times more likely to wear glasses every day than those diagnosed with coronavirus.
“Our main finding was that patients with COVID-19 who wore glasses for extended periods of time each day were relatively uncommon, which may be early evidence that those who wear glasses daily are less sensitive to COVID-19,” the authors wrote.
The researchers speculated that the frames ‘prevent or frustrate wearers from touching their eyes, thus preventing the virus from being transmitted to the eyes by hand.’
Studies have recently found that the eyes produce ACE-2, which makes the organs the main target for the virus.
Coronavirus is found not only on the surface of the eyes, but also inside the tears, which will transfer the pathogen.
This may explain why 12% of patients with COVD-19 have so-called ‘ocular manifestations’ such as redness and swelling.
The authors wrote, ‘Therefore, the eyes are considered an important channel for SARS-Co-2 to enter the human body.’
For daily wearers, who usually wear glasses on social occasions, wearing glasses can be a protective factor, reducing the risk of virus transmission to the eyes, and long-term daily wear of glasses will rarely infect COVID-19. ‘
In an invited comment, Dr. Lis, Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Lisa Maragakis said people shouldn’t wear glasses if they don’t need them.
However, the study concludes that the temptation is that everyone should wear glasses, goggles or face protection in public to protect their eyes and themselves from COVID-19, which we should avoid considering the causal relationship. ‘From a single observational study,’ he wrote.
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