Zika virus is capable of infecting the eye read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/787-zika-virus-is-capable-of-infecting-the-eye

Researchers have found Zika virus can live in eyes and have identified genetic material from the virus in tears.

According to a study, when an animal is infected with Zika, the virus can spread to the eyes, and genetic material from the virus can find its way into the tears.

However, researchers did not find live Zika virus in the tears of mice. Instead, they found RNA from the virus in the animal’s tears.

They found that, one week after an animal was infected with Zika, the mouse's tears could not spread the virus to other mice. But the researchers cautioned that more studies are needed to determine whether tears can spread Zika in people.

Dr. Jonathan Miner, an instructor in medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Loui, said, there could be a window of time when tears are highly infectious and people are coming in contact with it and able to spread it.

In people the virus is known to cause symptoms in the eyes. In adults, the virus can cause conjunctivitis (pink eye), which involves inflammation of the transparent membrane that lines the inside of the eyelid and the covering of the white part of the eyeball.

In rare cases, the virus can cause uveitis, or inflammation of the middle tissue layer of the eye, which can lead to pain, blurred vision and, in severe cases, blindness. Babies infected with Zika in the womb can also have damage to their eyes or blindness after birth.

For testing, researchers injected adult mice with the Zika virus. They found the virus was able to travel to the animal’s eyes and infect several regions of the eye, including the iris, retina and optic nerve.

Researchers noted that the body’s immune system is less active inside the eye, infections of the eye can sometimes linger for long periods after they have been cleared from the rest of the body.

If Zika does linger in the eye, this could have implications for corneal transplants, because the virus might be spread from a donor to a recipient during transplantation