CHICAGO – Researchers say a new study has confirmed for the first time that COVID-19 can cause the body to attack itself. Deep medical imaging reveals that some symptoms of pain and joint pain can be prolonged and require lifelong management.
In addition to losing her sense of smell in June last year, Tajma Hodzick had none of the telltale signs of a COVID infection.
“I haven’t even completely lost my sense of taste. In general, it was just a sense of smell, ”she recalled.
But within days of testing positive, the 31-year-old began to have more serious side effects. Blisters on the hands, rashes on the legs and arms appeared, and the joints began to swell.
“I started to have pain in my legs. I arrived in an emergency only because the swelling was very large on my hands. I had blisters, “Hodzick said. “I could not wash my hands because I could not rub them; it hurt so bad. ”
A new paper published in the journal Skeletal radiology confirmed and documented the causes of these types of symptoms by CT, MRI and ultrasound.
“In some patients, COVID-19 triggers an autoimmune reaction, which means the virus can fool the body into attacking itself,” said Dr. Swati Deshmukh, a musculoskeletal radiologist and assistant professor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
She is one of the authors of the study.
“Some of my patients have recovered and the imaging has shown signs of improvement, but for other patients, and especially for patients with these autoimmune conditions that have been triggered by COVID-19, they will need lifelong treatment.” , said Deshmukh.
In some cases, Dr. Deshmukh says that these types of inflammatory responses can mysteriously occur without other common symptoms of coronavirus.
“They may not even know they have been infected with the virus and then later they will continue to develop problems with their muscles, their nerves and their joints,” she said.
Imaging, she says, can help explain the origin of symptoms and can guide post-COVID-19 treatments from a rheumatologist or dermatologist.
After two hospitalizations and three biopsies, Hodzick was finally diagnosed with COVID-induced psoriatic arthritis. It could be one of the first of its kind.
The chronic condition now requires taking medication daily.
“We don’t really know what it will look like once it comes out of my system,” she said. “If I, at some point, start to get rid of drugs or if these symptoms will return. So right now, she’s a pretty big unknown. ”
It is another long-term symptom that experts say demonstrates how much remains to be learned about the persistent effects of the virus.