EYE PILLS COVID-19 No. 12 - Eye and Vaccines

Eye and COVID-19 vaccination

Pubblicato il

Monday, 21 March 2022

Argomento

Eye infections

Extensive and thorough review of the side effects on the eyes of currently administered vaccines to immunise against COVID-19.

The year 2022 seems to mark a slow but gradual exit from the pandemic emergency that has changed our way of life over the past two years. Worldwide, more than 220 million people have fallen ill and deaths have exceeded 4.5 million (data from August 2021) and, unfortunately, the Sars-Cov-2 virus, with its countless, increasingly contagious variants, seems destined to remain active in an endemic form. It will, therefore, most likely be necessary to provide permanent vaccination coverage against COVID-19, probably on an annual basis.

It may, therefore, be interesting to know the Undesirable ocular effects of anti-COVID-19 vaccinescurrently administered.

COVID-19 vaccination and the eye
Michael T M Wang, Rachael L Niederer, Charles N J McGhee, Helen V Danesh-Meyer
Am J Ophthalmol .2022 Feb 25;S0002-9394(22)00070-8.

The article takes the form of a scientific review, which examines and catalogues data extracted from four electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed, Cochrane), the population-based pharmacovigilance data of government agencies participating in the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring, published in English.
A small number of case reports have documented uveitic recurrences e acute corneal transplant rejection within the first three weeks following immunisation. A few isolated cases of optic neuropathy, retinal problems, scleritis and herpetic disease have also been reported. Population pharmacovigilance data seem, however, to suggest that adverse ocular events associated with vaccination are very rare and by no means comparable to the benefits of vaccination against COVID-19, even in patients with pre-existing eye diseases.

The full article is available online, with free access COVID-19 vaccination and the eye (nih.gov)