Health outcome · disease
Conjunctivitis
Also: allergic conjunctivitis, pink eye, conjunctival inflammation, rhinoconjunctivitis
Inflammation of the membrane covering the white of the eye and the inner eyelid, causing redness, discharge and itching. The allergic form is the one indoor air research meets, triggered by the same allergens that cause rhinitis.
Not reviewed by a clinician. This entry describes a disease or a symptom. We are introducing clinical review for pages of this kind; until that reviewer is in place, this page has been written and checked by the Coridum team but not reviewed by a clinician. It is general information and not medical advice. How this library is built is described in How we build this library.
Why it matters indoors
The eye and the nose share their allergic response, which is why the literature so often reports rhinoconjunctivitis as a single outcome: the same dust mite or mould allergen lands on both membranes and provokes the same reaction, and a person sensitised to it rarely has one without the other.
For indoor research that has a practical consequence. A result reported for rhinoconjunctivitis is evidence about both, and Coridum records it under the slug the study named rather than splitting it.
What separates this page from eye irritation and dry eye is mechanism, and it matters because the remedies differ. Conjunctivitis needs prior sensitisation and responds to removing the allergen; irritation is dose-dependent and needs no allergy; dryness is an evaporation problem driven by humidity and blinking. All three present as a red, uncomfortable eye in a questionnaire.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | OR 1.11 (1.02–1.21) per 1 ppm-year of cumulative carbon-monoxide exposure | young children · home | prospective cohort in the western highlands of Guatemala: cumulative personal carbon-monoxide exposure of young children in three groups defined by chimney-stove use in the RESPIRE and CRECER studies, against allergic outcomes, skin prick tests and symptoms, adjusted for socio-economic covariates | F-0972 Lu et al. Biomass Smoke Exposure and Atopy among Young Children in the… (2022) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Conjunctivitis. Coridum Knowledge G-0199, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0199/