Conjunctivitis, best known as pink eye, is a condition that’s best characterized by eye redness. While associated with eye redness, it’s a condition that’s known as the inflammation of the eye’s outermost layer (conjunctiva) and the inner surface of the eyelids.
About Pink Eye
The most common symptoms of pink eye include the aforementioned redness, irritation, tearing, photophobia, eye discharge and swelling. Pink eye typically doesn’t have one cause. It typically has several causes, often due to some type of infection and/or reaction that involves the eyes.
The most common causes often involve allergic, bacterial, viral, chemical and autoimmune infections or reactions. Rare cases of pink eye might form from uncommon infections or reactions. Most people, however, experience bacterial, viral or allergic pink eye.
Pink eye, as most know, is contagious. People that make contact with an infected person’s eye and/or anything they may have came in contact with can get infected with pink eye. That includes objects that may have come in contact with their eye before they contracted symptoms and after they’ve experienced the condition.
The Incubation Period of Pink Eye
Most people who contract pink eye often have the illness before they start developing symptoms. The average incubation period for viral pink eye often lasts as little as 12 hours and as long as 3 days.
Bacterial pink eye, on the other hand, usually has an incubation period that lasts as little as 24 hours to as long as 72 hours. As mentioned, people that do have pink eye during this period might not experience immediate symptoms.
Some sources say that pink eye isn’t contagious during the incubation period. Due to the nature of this illness, however, people should still avoid contact with infected people to avoid contracting the condition themselves. It’s because some bacteria or viruses are known to make infected people harbor the illness for long as several days or several weeks at a time.
To provide an interesting note, pink eye caused by eye-related allergies isn’t contagious. In this case, the pink eye developed due to the inflammation provoked by the allergen in question and not any bacteria or viruses.
Bacterial pink eye is often treated with topical antibiotic medications, in the form of eye drops or ointment, to help remedy the infection there. These medications typically take up to 24 hours to work. Viral pink eye infections often need to run their course before completely going away. They’re often treated with lubricating eye drops to relieve the present irritation.
