Coronavirus: Signs COVID-19 is affecting other parts of your body, besides lungs

With the second wave of coronavirus, the number of COVID cases in India has surged tremendously. Besides the challenges posed by the new mutations and it's associated symptoms, growing evidence suggests that besides disrupting lung health, COVID-19 can also affect other parts of the body.

Given that the SARs-COV-2 virus enters and infects the respiratory tracts, causing coughing, shortness of breath, and difficulty in breathing, it can lead to severe damage to your lung health. The deadly virus infects your body by entering healthy cells and multiplies in number, causing inflammatory changes to the lungs and negatively impacting the lung tissues and sacs.

However, in addition to the wide range of lung injuries, the novel coronavirus can take a toll on other parts of the body too.

As COVID-19 virus progresses in the body, experts and medical professionals believe that it causes severe inflammations in different parts of the body, weakening the immune system furthermore. Additionally, if a person has a pre-existing medical conditions like diabetes or hypertension or is obese, the damage done may be even greater. That said, it is important to not only monitor all your symptoms, but also important to keep a track of all the changes you experience in your body.

While factors like pre-existing heart conditions and poor metabolic health elevate the risk of COVID-19 in people, the SARs-COV-2 virus can cause major inflammation to the heart muscles in COVID-19 patients. As per a Harvard Health publication, "Heart injury, which may be measured by elevated levels of the enzyme troponin in the bloodstream, has been detected in about one-quarter of patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 illness. Of these patients, about one-third have pre-existing CVD."

That said, symptoms like abnormal heart rate, palpitations, chest pain and chronic fatigue are often seen in people down with the coronavirus infections.

As per earlier reports, COVID-19 patients often complained of symptoms like mental confusion, headaches, hallucination, dizziness and blurred vision. A study published in JAMA Neurology also found that one-third of 214 hospitalized Covid-19 patients in Wuhan had neurologic symptoms, of which seizures and strokes were some of the most severe complications. Studies have also claimed that Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s disease may be some of the long term effects of COVID-19.

Amongst other medical complications, low kidney function is also one of the growing problems in COVID or COVID-recovered patients. As is known, SARS-CoV-2 infects cells, wherein the viral spike proteins latch on to the ACE2 receptors (the receptor for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that allows it to infect the cells) that sit in the cellular membranes of cells lining many of the organs, including kidney.

Once the virus enters kidney cells, it can cause severe inflammations and cause major injuries to the healthy tissues in the kidney. This can cause low urine output and infrequent urination and can also develop major kidney dysfunction post-COVID.

COVID-19 can cause severe inflammations in the body that can trigger the formation of blood clots.

While the reason behind why COVID-19 causes blood clots is still under study, experts believe that the SARs-COV-2 virus, once it attaches itself to the ACE2 receptors, pushes the blood vessels to produce proteins that trigger blood clotting.

Doctors have reported signs of blood clots not just in the lungs(pulmonary embolism), but in the legs (deep vein thrombosis) and other parts of the body.

Considering COVID-19 causes severe inflammations in different parts of the body, it can slow down the recovery process in long haulers. The virus can not only take a toll on the lungs, but also the heart and brain, which increases the risk of long-term health problems.