Although COVID-19 cases in the US are starting to decline, millions are still fighting the virus – struggling to sift through their symptoms in the process. Over the past few months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have added new symptoms to the information sheet, including loss of smell / taste and congestion. But now anecdotal reports have made a new report, which has caused the monk ‘COVID tongue’.
The reports, which have been widely posted on Facebook, describe symptoms such as a swollen tongue, one with a scaly appearance or a ‘variegated surface’ of the tongue. Yet COVID-19 experts say it’s too soon to pair it. So, what’s really happening? Here’s what you need to know.
Some patients on social media say they have experienced tongue reactions
In the COVID-19 Facebook group Survivor Corps, a grassroots organization of COVID-19 patients, shared many oral symptoms that they believe coincided with their positive testing for the coronavirus. Carol Van Der Spuy, a marketing manager in Cape Town, South Africa, said she noticed the symptoms when she tested positive for COVID-19 a second time. ‘I had big spots [my tongue] which had a different color, ”she says. “It almost looks like it was ‘clean burned’. ‘
New Yorker Martha Barrera says she developed symptoms two weeks after she received COVID-19 in March. “My tongue swelled,” she tells Yahoo Life. “It was painful and so sensitive and I could not tolerate anything cold or hot. It was also white … no matter how many times I brushed, the color was different. Doctor did not know what to do, so he prescribed three weeks of spray medication. Ten months later my tongue swells out of the blue. I still have problems. ”
There is little research to suggest that the symptoms are linked to COVID-19
Two small studies analyzed COVID-19 and oral symptoms, and none of them were conclusive. One comes from researchers at La Paz Hospital in Madrid, who checked the records of more than 600 COVID-19 patients and found that 25 percent of them had some kind of tongue reaction. “We found changes in the tongue that had not been linked to Covid until then,” said Dr. Almudena Nuño González said in a press release. “The tongue is enlarged, it looks swollen, the teeth can be seen and … with small indentations in the back where the taste buds are flat.”
Another report was published in The Egyptian Journal of Otolaryngology mid-January, but contains less details on the possible symptoms. In it, researchers simply said that the symptoms should not be overlooked. ‘This is crucial for ENT [ear, nose and throat] doctors have a high suspicion of identifying those COVID 19 patients with atypical offerings, ‘the authors write.
US experts say they have not yet seen the reaction
According to several experts who spoke to Yahoo Life, there is not enough evidence at this stage to link the tongue symptoms to COVID-19. Experts from the Mount Sinai Health System’s center for post-COVID care – the first recovery center for survivors in the USA – have not yet seen a “single case” where COVID tongue is treated among the “thousands of patients”.
Doctors at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center agree, saying tongue reactions are also not a condition they treat. “I can not say that I have encountered anything like this, and it is not something we have discussed as a group,” said Dr. Jeffrey Horowitz, professor of medicine and divisional director of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine.
According to an otolaryngologist, the symptoms may not be related
Dr. Nina Shapiro, director of pediatric ear, nose and throat at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital and a professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says none of the symptoms described in the studies are unusual, meaning that it can occur for other reasons. ‘Do some of these people have it? [these symptoms] anyway, and because they are so closely followed, do they find it? she asked. “It’s hard to know.”
She notes that oral symptoms can be caused by things like colds or other illnesses, as well as reactions to certain medications that weaken the immune system, such as steroids. Dexamethasone, a corticosteroid, has been identified as an ‘effective’ treatment for COVID-19.
The symptoms themselves are less mysterious than they seem
Shapiro breaks down exactly what happens in the strange descriptions from the studies. ‘Some of these pictures [in the studies] looks like ‘geographical tongue’, which makes the tongue look like a map with small islands and whitish discoloration, ‘she says. “It is associated with colds and other diseases, but it is not in itself a cause for concern.” The Mayo Clinic describes geographic tongue as “an inflammatory but harmless condition that affects the surface of your tongue.”
Sores or other wounds to the tongue could be a sign of another infection, she says. “Lesions in the tongue, such as stomach ulcers, can be associated with viral diseases,” she says. ‘It could be due to a secondary viral infection, such as herpes, or other types of viruses that grow in the mouth and throat, such as Coxsackievirus. So there can definitely be a viral association. ‘
A tongue-like woolly appearance, Shapiro says, is probably candida. “The hairy tongue, where it looks almost like a small carpet, is usually just a fungal infection,” she says. “If your immune system is weakened for some reason – simply by stress itself or by some treatments you use – you could develop secondary infections such as candida in the mouth.”
And what about the sculpted appearance? Also nothing to worry about. “Some irregularities at the borders of the tongue can be of many things,” she says. ‘Many of the patients have been described [in the studies] had pneumonia, so it was possible that they had intubated or had oxygen and were severely dehydrated or clogged.
In general, Shapiro says that oral problems are usually secondary and not the ‘primary problem’. They are also probably not related to the loss of smell and taste, which results from the olfactory nerves. Apart from antifungal drugs or other effective remedies, she says, the best way to address them is to get rid of the underlying infection. “They must resolve as the disease disappears.”
For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over the age of 60 and those with an immune system are at greatest risk. If you have any questions, please refer to the CDCs and WIE’s resource guides.
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Originally published