In Italy, an 86-year-old woman whose fingers turned black with gangrene as COVID-19 induced extreme clotting, cutting off the blood supply to her extremities, witnessed the new unexpected side effect.
After diagnosing the woman in April 2020, doctors were forced to amputate three of her digits, naming the case study ‘a significant manifestation’ of the disease in a recent report published in the European Journal of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery.
Physicians were already aware that, although they are not yet sure why, the coronavirus could wreak havoc on the vascular system. Many in the medical community currently suspect that the side effect could be due to an increasingly common immune overreaction to COVID-19, called a “cytokine storm,” which causes both sick cells and healthy tissues to invade the body.
New, unpredictable conditions of the disease continue to be discovered by the medical community as the US hits 27 million cases this week after the outbreak in March 2020, according to World Health Organization reports. According to the Centers or Disease Control and Prevention, while many experience ailments similar to those associated with influenza, such as fever, body aches, trouble breathing and nasal congestion, other common warning signs have included nausea and vomiting, diarrhoea and a mysterious inability to taste and smell.
The speculation of Spector comes from knowledge gathered in the UK by the ZOE COVID Symptom Review, which allows Britons to self-report what they feel during an infection. “Last week, Spector told USA Today that “COVID tongue,” in which patients with coronavirus tongues inexplicably swell, is one of the rarest symptoms he has observed, he estimated, “affecting less than 1 in 100 people.
