Coronavirus Affects the Internal Organs Too, Say Medical Experts While Noting Additional Peculiar Symptoms

Medical experts around the world have been learning more and more about how coronavirus attacks the body, initially categorizing it as a respiratory virus like SARS and MERS. However, scientists are only beginning to understand the various health problems COVID-19 causes, including long-term effects and damage to internal organs.

Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist, and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California, said, 'we thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney, and other organs. We didn't appreciate that in the beginning.'

There had also been more cases of blood clotting disorders, inflammation in internal organs, and several neurological complications, which were initially rare. Cases of seizures, diarrhea, and complications with other underlying illnesses are additional peculiar symptoms.

Acute Pancreatitis

Although there had been a number of recoveries worldwide, many people still have long-term effects of the virus, such as needing oxygen at home and one case where two family members had severe acute pancreatitis.

Acute pancreatitis is one of the most common gastrointestinal illnesses in the United States, yet these COVID-19 patients did not obtain it from normal causes such as alcohol, gall stones, and drugs.
The daughter, age 47, was a previously healthy individual who suffered regular symptoms of coronavirus when she was admitted to the hospital. After testing positive for the virus, she developed acute kidney failure, complicating her respiratory symptoms, and underwent a tracheostomy.

The patient's mother, age 68, was admitted two days after her daughter, who also experienced abdominal pain. She developed acute kidney failure on her third day in the hospital and had slight abdominal distention the next day when gas or fluid causes the abdomen to expand.

Paying Attention to Long-Haulers

Dr. Sadiya Khan, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, shared how surprised she is that the virus causes complications outside the lungs. Those with underlying heart conditions face the most complications, she added.

Survivors who were under intensive care or needed a ventilator while they were hospitalized will be needing extensive time to fully or partially recover. 'It can take up to seven days for every one day that you're hospitalized to recover that type of strength,' Kahn said. 'It's harder the older you are, and you may never get back to the same level of function.'

Doctors are beginning to pay more attention to coronavirus-positive people who were not hospitalized, yet continue to suffer months after initial infection, called 'long-haulers.' Medical experts such as Jay Butler, deputy director of infectious diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that they still have so much to learn about COVID-19's long-term effects.

'We hear anecdotal reports of people who have persistent fatigue, shortness of breath," Butler said. 'How long that will last is hard to say.'

Dr. Helen Salisbury of the University of Oxford, who regularly writes medical blogs on the British Medical Journal, estimated that 1 in 10 survivors experience prolonged symptoms. Although her patients' chest X-rays are normal without inflammation, infection, or blood clots, they have not fully recovered.

She wrote, 'If you previously ran 5k three times a week and now feel breathless after a single flight of stairs, or if you cough incessantly and are too exhausted to return to work, then the fear that you may never regain your previous health is very real.'

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