Last week I went on a trip to Senegal. There I saw that almost all inhabitants have yellow eyes. My father said that it is because they have or have had hepatitis A and that they have permanent liver damage, which means that the average age is low in those areas.
I was quite shocked by that, so I did some research on hepatitis A. Everywhere it says that the yellow eyes are only temporary, that there is no permanent liver damage and that the disease is over after a few weeks.
How about that?
Answer
Indeed, it is unlikely that this is hepatitis A: hep A is indeed an acute disease, ie it comes on quickly and does not last very long, a maximum of a few weeks, as you have looked up carefully. You may have yellow eyes, but you are also very ill with a high fever, fatigue, etc… Hep A also never causes permanent pain, unlike Hep B: this form of jaundice is also common in Africa and can be permanent cause liver problems, eg yellow eyes (‘icterus’).
But most likely this is a chronic irritation of the conjunctiva of the eye (the ‘coniunctiva’), which in many Africans is indeed manifested by a yellow-brown discoloration of the whites of the eyes. Furthermore, those people have little trouble with it, and not much can be done about it, unless they live in a less dust-free environment. But that’s not possible for everyone…
dr. Ludwig Apers, Institute of Tropical Medicine
Answered by
Pieter Van Dooren
science journalist with broad knowledge
Nationalestraat 155 2000 Antwerp
http://www.itg.be/
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