COVID TONGUE
' COVID tongue' or Coated tongue has been identified as a new coronavirus symptom.
According to the WHO, the most common symptoms of Covid-19 are fever, dry cough, and tiredness. Other symptoms include loss of taste or smell, aches and pains, headache, sore throat, nasal congestion, red eyes, diarrhoea, or a skin rash.
COVID-19 can cause an acute infection inside the mouth and form thick patches all over the tongue called COVID tongue.
It can also cause patches and ulcers all across your mouth.
It can be a serious infection inside the mouth . This may seem alarming initially but it's a harmless condition. The tongue gets back to normal in few days or a week's time.
Studies suggest that the mouth might be a vulnerable area to coronavirus due to the abundance of the ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme) receptor in oral tissue.
Tongue features of patients with covid19: a retrospective cross-sectional study
Patients diagnosed with mild to moderate COVID-19 commonly had light red tongue and white coating.
Severe patients had purple tongue and yellow coating.
The proportion of critical patients with tender tongue increased to 75%.
Greasy coating was a significant characteristic of patients with COVID-19. The proportions of greasy coating were 53.3%, 73.3%, 83.6% and 87.5% in disease category of mild, moderate, severe and critical.
In addition, the thick coating proportion increased from mild (24.9%) to critical (50.0%).
There is an increase in the number of Covid patients suffering from uncomfortable mouth symptoms like oral ulcers - not yet listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the Covid-19 symptoms. There are cases which presented with an oral rash too.
A recent New York Times article said that Covid survivors described oral problems they're experiencing such as "teeth falling out, sensitive gums, teeth turning grey, and teeth cracking."
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