There may be another addition to the growing list of strange possible symptoms of the new coronavirus: ‘COVID tongue’.
A British researcher helping to detect COVID-19 warning signs reports more cases of infected people complaining of tongue discoloration, enlargement and other mouth problems.
‘See an increasing number of Covid tongues and strange mouth sores. If you have a strange symptom or even just have headaches and fatigue, stay home! ‘Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, tweeted this month.
He believes more than a third of COVID-19 patients, 35%, have non-classic symptoms of the disease in the first three days, so it is important to pay attention to skin rashes, COVID tones and other warning signs that ‘ignored,’ he wrote.
Spector did not respond to a TODAY request for comment, but other researchers also reported tongue and mouth symptoms associated with the new coronavirus.
When doctors studied 666 patients with COVID – 19 in Spain, more than a tenth of them – 78 – displayed ‘oral cavity findings’, according to a study published in the British Journal of Dermatology.
Of the group, 11% had inflammation of the small bumps on the surface of the tongue; 6% have a swollen and inflamed tongue with notches on the side; 6% have mouth ulcers; 4% had ‘patchless’ areas on the tongue; and 4% had tissue swelling in the mouth.
The oral cavity “deserves specific examination under appropriate conditions to avoid risk of infection,” the authors wrote.
Tongue or mouth problems – other than sore throat – do not appear on the list of COVID-19 symptoms compiled by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, although the agency acknowledges that it is still learning more about the new coronavirus, so the page does not includes all possible warning signs.
After all, the loss of smell and taste initially seems to be a strange symptom, but is now considered one of the most common manifestations and is part of the list.
Other yet to be confirmed situations include ‘fizzing’ or a tingling sensation reported by some COVID-19 patients. Will ‘COVID tongue’ be placed in a similar category?
‘It’s consistent with all the things about COVID. When it burst onto the scene, as I figuratively put it, we opened our medical textbooks to COVID, and there were only blank pages, ‘said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, said. TELL TODAY.
“Since then, we have been filling in the blank pages leak-split, and it may well be that it is part of the clinical syndrome that some patients have.”
Schaffner has not yet seen cases of ‘COVID tongue’, but he has heard it discussed. It may not be that the mouth is vulnerable to the new coronavirus, but that COVID-19 can set up an immune condition so that other viruses such as herpes labialis – the herpes virus above the waist, or herpes simplex virus type 1, which causes’ an infection in the lips, mouth or gums – may activate, Schaffner said.
Researchers have yet to determine if any mouth and tongue problems are related to COVID-19, he added.
“People respond differently to different diseases,” said Dr. Waleed Javaid, director of infection prevention and control at Mount Sinai Downtown in New York, said.
But at the moment he will not consider ‘COVID tongue’ as a diagnostic tool for the disease, just because it seems to occur in a very small percentage of people.
The American Dental Association and the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery could not immediately comment on whether cases of oral and tongue problems were reported by COVID-19 patients.
