Eye movement alterations in post-COVID-19 condition: a proof-of-concept study

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 22; no. 4; p. 1481
• Main Authors: García Cena, Cecilia, Costa, Mariana Campos, Saltarén Pazmiño, Roque, Santos, Cristina, Gómez-Andrés, David, Benito-León, Julián
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 01.02.2022; MDPI AG; MDPI
• Subjects: Alzheimer's disease; Blinking; Comparative analysis; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; eye movement; Eye Movements; Health aspects; Humans; Long COVID; Nervous system diseases; pathophysiology; post-COVID-19 condition; Saccades; saccadic movement; SARS-CoV-2; Science & Technology; wearable gaze-tracker; Spain; wearable gaze-tracker; saccadic movement; eye movement; post-COVID-19 condition; pathophysiology
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s22041481

The data sets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. There is much evidence pointing out eye movement alterations in several neurological diseases. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first video-oculography study describing potential alterations of eye movements in the post-COVID-19 condition. Visually guided saccades, memory-guided saccades, and antisaccades in horizontal axis were measured. In all visual tests, the stimulus was deployed with a gap condition. The duration of the test was between 5 and 7 min per participant. A group of <inline-formula> n = 9 </inline-formula> patients with the post-COVID-19 condition was included in this study. Values were compared with a group (<inline-formula> n = 9 </inline-formula>) of healthy volunteers whom the SARS-CoV-2 virus had not infected. Features such as centripetal and centrifugal latencies, success rates in memory saccades, antisaccades, and blinks were computed. We found that patients with the post-COVID-19 condition had eye movement alterations mainly in centripetal latency in visually guided saccades, the success rate in memory-guided saccade test, latency in antisaccades, and its standard deviation, which suggests the involvement of frontoparietal networks. Further work is required to understand these eye movements’ alterations and their functional consequences. This research was partially funded by RoboCity2030-DIH-CM Madrid Robotics Digital Innovation Hub (“Robotica aplicada a la mejora de la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos, Fase IV”; S2018/NMT-4331), funded by Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds of the EU. and partially funded by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Vicerrectorado de Estrategia Académica e Internacionalización. Area Cooperación al Desarrollo. J. Benito-León is supported by the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA (NINDS #R01 NS39422 and R01NS094607), European Commission (grant ICT-2011-287739, NeuroTREMOR), the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant RTC-2015-3967-1, NetMD—platform for the tracking of movement disorder), and the Spanish Health Research Agency (grant FIS PI12/01602 and grant FIS PI16/00451.