The eye color of a
Thailand infant changed for days after he received a popular COVID treatment,
his parents said.
It all started when the
6-month-old developed a cough and a fever before he was diagnosed with COVID-19,
according to the medical journal Frontiers in Pediatrics.
Doctors gave the child
the antiviral treatment favipiravir, a medicine approved by the Thai Ministry
of Public Health last year to treat COVID-19 infections in children.
But 18 hours after he
first took the medication, the child’s mom noticed that his dark brown eyes
became bright blue.
After contacting
medics, the mother was told to stop the treatment. The child’s eyes remained
discolored for five days before returning to their original pigmentation.
Doctors examined the
baby’s eyes and found no bluish pigment deposit on the surface of the iris or
the lens capsule.
They suggested that the
discoloration was caused by “the drug, its metabolites, or additional tablet
components such as titanium dioxide and yellow ferric oxide.”
The baby did not suffer any lingering impacts on their
vision.