Handle with care: Chinese study finds aquatic virus can infect human eyes
Handling seafood with bare hands or eating it raw said to increase risk of exposure to pathogen first found in shrimp
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A virus found in shrimp and fish may cause an eye disease in humans, according to a recent study that marks the first known case of a pathogen from aquatic animals infecting people.
Those “who handle dissected aquatic animals daily without adequate protection or eat raw aquatic animals daily are at high risk” of being exposed to the virus, the researchers cautioned in their recently published paper.
They advised taking protective measures, such as wearing gloves, when handling such animals at home.
Advertisement“To date, no virus originating from aquatic animals has been shown to infect humans and directly cause disease,” they wrote, adding that they found “this emerging human eye disease is associated with cross-species infection by an aquatic virus”.
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