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November 7, 2020 – 10:39 am
Corona is not the same as Corona
It is now known that Covid 19 diseases can manifest themselves in a variety of symptoms. Now, a new study suggests that the symptoms of mild Covid-19 courses can be divided into seven groups.
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Covid-19: Some groups of symptoms occur together
Researchers at the Medical University of Vienna found that some symptom clusters usually occur together. Ten weeks after infection, they looked at which immune cells and antibodies were detectable in cured Covid-19 patients. They also asked the 109 study participants what symptoms they had. All recovering individuals were on a fairly mild course of Covid-19. A control group consisted of 98 healthy people. The scientists published their findings in the European Journal of Allergy and Immunology.
These recorded symptom clusters indicate that there are seven different forms of the disease with a mild course of Covid-19. “We were able to clearly distinguish between systemic and organ-specific forms of primary Covid-19 disease,” reports Winfried Pickl, one of the study’s authors.
Systemic or organ-specific
The first variant of Covid-19 is therefore characterized by flu-like symptoms: fever, fatigue and cough. A second form shows more cold symptoms with a runny nose, sneezing, dry throat, and nasal congestion. The third variant of Covid manifests itself exclusively or mainly in joint and muscle pain, a fourth in pronounced inflammation of the eyes and mucous membranes.
A fifth symptom complex is lung problems with pneumonia and shortness of breath. In the sixth form, those affected suffer mainly from gastrointestinal problems with diarrhea, nausea and headache. After all, the seventh form of the disease is the loss of smell and taste. “In the latter group, we found that loss of smell and taste increasingly affects people with a ‘young immune system’, as measured by the number of T cells that have recently migrated from the thymus,” says Pickl.
Corona leaves an immunological footprint
Regardless of the variant of acute Covid 19 disease, there are many similarities in terms of long-term immunological consequences. As a result, SARS-CoV-2 leaves a kind of immunological imprint in the immune system and blood of the recovering person. The number of white blood cells, otherwise responsible for fighting bacterial pathogens in the immune system, is significantly lower than normal in Covid convalescing patients. Instead there are more memory cells and the cytotoxic CD8 + T cells remain highly activated. One of their jobs is to kill virus-infected cells.
The higher the person’s fever, the higher the levels of antibodies to the virus. “This shows that the immune system is still intensely coping with the disease many weeks after the initial infection,” says Pickl. These immunological changes may also help explain some of the long-term effects of Covid-19. Many patients experience fatigue, neurological symptoms, or heart problems for weeks after the infection has passed. Type 1 diabetes and Parkinson’s disease could also be caused or at least promoted by Covid-19, as some studies suggest.
The scientists stress that their findings may contribute to a better understanding of the disease and also to the development of potential vaccines, “as we can now rely on promising biomarkers and monitor them even better.”
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