The SARS virus was detected in teardrops taken from patients in Singapore last year, doctors said Monday, raising the prospect the disease may be easier to diagnose.
The finding — published in the current issue of the British Journal of Ophthalmology — may also highlight one of the ways that severe acute respiratory syndrome spreads, they said.
The seven doctors who compiled the study took tear swabs from 36 Singapore patients suspected of having SARS in 2003. Signs of the virus that causes the illness were found in three of the eight people who eventually tested positive.
Simple method
All three tear samples were taken in the early stages of illness, suggesting tear sampling could offer early confirmation of SARS’ presence, said Dr. Loon Seng Chee of the Eye Institute at the National University of Singapore.
“We are proposing that this is a simple method, it is easily repeated and involves less discomfort for the patient” than taking blood samples, Loon said.
But the discovery of the virus in tears also poses a risk to health care workers, the study found.
SARS, previously unknown, spread rapidly across the world last year, infecting more than 8,000 people and killing 774. It is believed to have originated in southern China. In Singapore, 33 people died of 238 sickened by the flu-like illness.
“Even as the epidemic has died down, we are warned of future outbreaks,” Loon and his colleagues wrote. “This may be a simple tool in identifying probable cases in future, and prospective trials are being designed.”
Detecting viruses in teardrops is not new.
Chicken pox and two strains of hepatitis were among the diseases that have been found in tear ducts, the doctors said.
“If there’s a further outbreak, we can put our hypothesis to work,” said Loon, who was one of hundreds of medical staff who helped to combat the disease in Singapore last year.
Loon and his team stressed the number of patients included in the study was very small, and — should there be another outbreak — a more comprehensive study could be undertaken.