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Longitudinal follow-up of macular retinal microcirculation in patients with Post-COVID Syndrome.
Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 66:2 (2025)
Purpose :
Post-COVID syndrome (PCS) is a multifactorial disorder with
different subgroups. Recent data suggest that a subgroup of PCS patients
show an impaired capillary, retinal microcirculation, imaged by
OCT-angiography (OCT-A). The present study aimed to investigate the
longitudinal follow-up of macular retinal microcirculation in PCS
patients compared to controls. Methods :
310 eyes of 155 subjects were recruited at the Department of
Ophthalmology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg: 142 eyes of 71 patients
with PCS (39 female, 32 male; age 41.19± 11 years) and 168 eyes of 84
controls (47 female, 37 male; age 35.09±14 years). Capillary
microcirculation was measured by en-face OCT-A imaging twice (Spectralis
II, Heidelberg Engineering, Germany) in the macula: Vessel Density (VD;
superficial vascular plexus (SVP), intermediate capillary plexus (ICP),
deep capillary plexus (DCP)). PCS symptom persistency was 300±123 days
at the time of visit1. Mean time of follow-up was 284 days.
VD was calculated by the Erlangen-Angio tool, including an APSifyed and
Bruch’s membrane opening (BMO) based analysis. A mixed model was done in
such a way that each patient had multiple measurements over time and
for each eye, with gender and age as covariates. The study was approved
by the local ethics committee and performed in accordance to the tenets
of the Declaration of Helsinki. Results :
Baseline: the estimates least-squares means (LS-means) of VD
were 34.5 vs 32.6 (SVP), 24.15 vs 23.6 (ICP), and 26.35 vs 26.2 (DCP) in
controls vs PCS patients; LS-Mean VD of ICP (p-value =0.0387) and DCP
(p-value =0.0311) were significantly reduced in PCS patients compared to
controls. Follow-up analysis within PCS patients showed a VD of 30.5 vs
30.3 (SVP), 22.4 vs. 22.0 (ICP), and 23.8 vs 23.7 (DCP) at visit1 vs visit2 in patients with PCS. Mixed model analysis yielded significant effects for LS-Mean of VD of ICP between visit1 versus visit2 (p-value=0.0098) in patients with PCS. Conclusions :
As capillary VD in ICP was observed to diminish further over
time in patients with persistent PCS, further research is needed to
understand PCS effect on retinal microvasculature.
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Publication type
Article: Journal article
Document type
Meeting abstract
ISSN (print) / ISBN
0146-0404
e-ISSN
1552-5783
Quellenangaben
Volume: 66,
Issue: 8,
Article Number: 2
Publisher
Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO)
Publishing Place
12300 Twinbrook Parkway, Rockville, Md 20852-1606 Usa
Reviewing status
Peer reviewed
Institute(s)
Research Unit BioGeoChemistry and Analytics (BGC)