the prevalence of viral conjunctivitis in patients who referred to eye specialist hospitals in tehran, iran

purpose: the main purpose of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of herpes simplex virus 1 and 2 (hsv-1 and hsv-2), varicella-zoster virus and adenovirus associated with conjunctivitis in swab samples of patients who referred to eye specialist hospitals in tehran. methods: in this cross-sectional study, swab samples from patients with acute conjunctivitis during the first sixth months of 2012, in two ophthalmic departments of tehran were collected. after dna extraction, multiplex real-time pcr was carried out in two separate reactions for each sample. results: a total of 150 swap samples were collected from acute conjunctivitis patients. among them, 22 (14.6%) and 5 (3.3%) were positive for adenovirus and hsv-1 dna, respectively. there were no patients with positive results for hsv-2, vzv. statistical analysis showed insignificant p-value (0.845) between gender and conjunctivitis however, there was close correlation (p-value <0.05) with age. moreover, 63.6% of adenoviral conjunctivitis occurs in the summer compared to spring (36.4), whereas no significant seasonal variation was observed for hsv-1.  conclusion: this prevalence pattern indicates that adenovirus has major role in viral conjunctivitis rather than hsv-1. further research is needed to identify other viral pathogens associated with ocular infection.  iranian journal of ophthalmology 201426(1):29-32 © 2014 by the iranian society of ophthalmology