‘Covid tongue’ may be another symptom of coronavirus, researcher suggests

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There could be another addition to the growing list of possible strange symptoms of the novel coronavirus: the ‘Covid tongue’.

A British researcher who is helping to follow the warning signs of Covid-19 reports more cases of infected people complaining of tongue discoloration, enlargement and other mouth problems.

“Seeing an increasing number of Covid tongues and strange mouth ulcers. If you have a weird symptom or even just a headache and fatigue, stay home! »Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, tweeted this month.

He believes that more than a third of COVID-19 patients, 35%, have unconventional symptoms of the disease in the first three days, so it’s important to draw attention to rashes, toes of Covid and other warning signs that “are being ignored,” he wrote.

Spector did not respond to a request for comment, but other researchers have also reported tongue and mouth symptoms linked to the novel coronavirus.

When doctors studied 666 patients with Covid-19 in Spain, more than a tenth of them – 78 – had “results from the oral cavity,” according to a study published in the British Journal of Dermatology.

Of this group, 11 percent had inflammation of the small bumps on the surface of the tongue; 6 percent had a swollen and inflamed tongue with indentations on the side; 6 percent had mouth ulcers; 4 percent had “patchy” areas on the tongue; and 4 percent had tissue swelling in the mouth.

© British Association of Dermatologists
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The oral cavity “deserves specific examination under appropriate circumstances to avoid the risk of contagion,” the authors wrote.

Tongue or mouth problems – other than a sore throat – do not appear on the list of symptoms of Covid-19 compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although the agency has acknowledged that it does. is still learning more about the novel coronavirus, so the page is not. t include all possible warning signs.

After all, loss of smell and taste seemed like a strange symptom at first, but is now considered one of the common manifestations and is on the list.

Other sensations not yet confirmed include a “fizzing” or tingling sensation reported by some patients with Covid-19. Will the “Covid language” be placed in a similar category?

“It’s kind of in sync with everything related to Covid,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. “When it broke out at the scene, as I like to put it figuratively, we opened up our medical textbooks to Covid and there were only blank pages.

Schaffner hasn’t seen a ‘Covid language’ case, but he has heard of it. It may not be that the mouth is vulnerable to the new coronavirus, but that Covid-19 can create an immune circumstance such as other viruses such as cold sores – the herpes virus above pruning, or the herpes simplex virus type 1, which causes infection of the lips, mouth or gums – may perhaps activate, Schaffner said.

Researchers have yet to determine whether mouth and tongue issues are indeed linked to Covid-19, he added.

“People respond to different illnesses differently,” said Dr. Waleed Javaid, director of infection prevention and control at Mount Sinai Downtown in New York City.

But he would not view ‘Covid tongue’ as a disease diagnostic tool just because it appears to be occurring in a very small proportion of people, he noted.

The American Dental Association and the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery could not immediately comment on whether cases of mouth and tongue problems had been reported by Covid-19 patients.