Medical imaging has revealed that in some cases COVID-19 can ‘attack the body itself’, which is the first look at the background of mysterious severe, prolonged and sometimes bizarre symptoms – even in those who never knew they had the virus, a new study has found.
From rheumatoid arthritis flares to autoimmune problems to ‘COVID tone’, there have been several reports of unusual and possible symptoms related to coronavirus, many of which were a mystery during the pandemic.
But according to a Northwestern Medicine study, radiological imaging “confirmed and illustrated the causes of these symptoms for the first time.”
“We realized that the COVID virus can cause the body to attack itself in various ways, which can lead to rheumatological problems that require lifelong management,” said the corresponding author, Dr. Swati Deshmukh, said in a release.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Skeletal Radiology, showed that imaging through CT scans, MRIs and ultrasound can help explain why some patients suffer from ‘prolonged musculoskeletal symptoms’ after contracting the virus.
“Many patients with COVID-related musculoskeletal disorders recover, but for some individuals their symptoms become severe, affect the patient deeply, or affect their quality of life, leading them to seek medical help and imaging,” said Deshmukh, an assistant. professor of musculoskeletal radiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine musculoskeletal radiologist, said. “That imaging enables us to see if COVID-related muscle and joint pain, for example, is not just body pain similar to what we see from flu, but something more insidious.”
In some cases, the imaging may even suggest that a patient had COVID-19 but otherwise did not know he had it, the study revealed.
According to Deshmukh, experts are looking for fluid or swelling in tissues, blood clots or gangrene.
“In some patients the nerves are injured and in others the problem is a reduced blood flow,” Deshmukh said.
Bizarre symptoms such as “COVID tone”, which in some cases can last for months, have been reported throughout the pandemic, but are not as common as other common symptoms associated with the virus.
However, according to the study, there were a “surprising number of extra-pulmonary manifestations” associated with the virus, along with emerging reports of other disorders and musculoskeletal disorders, which could “have serious and short-term consequences.”
Such long-term inflammation has recently made headlines after Gwyneth Paltrow revealed that she suffers from certain ailments for months after her initial diagnosis.
“I had COVID-19 early on, and it left me with a bit of long-tail fatigue and brain fog,” Paltrow wrote in a recent post for her website, Goop.
Paltrow said she had tests done in January that showed she had ‘very high levels of inflammation in my body’.
Researchers in the Northwest study said they hope their findings will help doctors treat certain rare ailments properly, which could lead to a coronavirus diagnosis.
“I think it’s important to distinguish between what causes the virus directly and what it causes the body to do,” Deshmukh said. “It is important that doctors know what is happening to treat correctly.”