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Updated: Sep 22, 2025
In Vivo Vascular Injury Readouts in Mouse Retina to Promote Reproducibility
Published on: April 21, 2022
Retinal vascular occlusion and SARS-CoV-2 vaccination
Stela Vujosevic1,2, Celeste Limoli3,4, Simona Romano3
1Department of Biomedical, Surgical and Dental Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy. stela.vujosevic@unimi.it.
Purpose:
To assess the clinical and retinal imaging features of patients in whom retinal vascular occlusion (VO) had developed in temporal associations with COVID-19 vaccination.
Methods:
In this retrospective case series, all consecutive adult patients with new onset VO within 6 weeks of vaccination against COVID-19 were included in the study between May 1 and October 31, 2021. All patients had a systemic medical health assessment, full ophthalmic evaluation, and complete fundus imaging.
Results:
Fifteen eyes of VO (14 patients) after COVID-19 vaccinations were identified. The median time between vaccination and symptoms onset was 14 days (range 7-42 days). The mean best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was 20/55 with a range of 20/20 to 20/200. Eleven of 15 eyes (73.3%) had visual acuity improvement after intravitreal treatment at 60-90 days (range, 45-105 days) from the presentation. Four of 5 cases without systemic risk factors for VO had a mean BCVA > 20/32 at presentation and > 20/25 at the latest evaluation. Between May 1 and October 31, 2021, a temporal association was found between the 15 reported cases and COVID-19 vaccination out of a total of 29 VO (p = 0.05). The incidence of VO was higher in the considered period compared to the equivalent 6-month period in 2019 (1.17% vs 0.52%, respectively; p = 0.0134).
Conclusions:
Retinal vascular occlusion with different grades of severity are reported in temporal association with COVID-19 vaccination. The exact pathogenic mechanism needs to be further studied. No certain causal relationship can be established from this case series.
