Tim Spector, an epidemiologist from King’s College London, has just discovered a new symptom of Covid-19.
- One in five people with Covid have symptoms that are not on the official Public Health England list.
It all started with a photograph, posted on January 13 on Tim Spector’s Twitter account, an epidemiologist from King’s College London. In the picture, the tongue of a patient – anonymized of course – is covered with unusual white spots. Tim Spector called this phenomenon “the COVID language”. According to him, it would be a new symptom of the coronavirus.
Above the image he writes: “One in five people with Covid still have less common symptoms, which are not on the official Public Health England list, such as rashes. (…) If you have a strange symptom or even just headaches and fatigue, stay home!”
One in five people with Covid still present with less common symptoms that dont get on the official PHE list – such as skin rashes. Seeing increasing numbers of Covid tongues and strange mouth ulcers. If you have a strange symptom or even just headache and fatigue stay at home! pic.twitter.com/V04CiZNilK
— Tim Spector (@timspector) January 13, 2021
Studies confirm symptoms of Covid-19 in the mouth
No wonder Tim Spector keeps a close eye on these kinds of symptoms, as he’s also director of the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app. On this interface, Covid-19 patients can declare all their symptoms, from the most common to the least known. Building on its success – 4.5 million users – this device is one of the largest ongoing studies on Covid-19. The data collected may eventually make it possible to carry out scientific work in order to better understand the various symptoms that the virus causes in patients.
But the discovery of Tim Spector is not a first. Indeed, several unusual manifestations of the virus have already been observed on the tongue and in the mouth of some patients. A study published last June in the journal Nature Evidence-Based Dentistry For example, linked a person’s Covid-19 infection to blisters that had developed in their mouth.
A patient’s tongue is extremely swollen due to Covid-19
In other study, published in the journal JAMA Dermatology, the researchers had observed small red spots inside the mouth of six people with Covid-19, out of the 21 in the study, or 29% of the patients. According to these scientists, these symptoms were due to Covid-19.
Another example, in July 2020, an American woke up from his artificial coma with an extremely swollen tongue. This was also a particularly rare complication of Covid-19. As the months go by, the list of symptoms of Covid-19 grows longer. It is up to the researchers to refine their analyzes in order to determine which are really attributable to the coronavirus.
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