A study conducted at Washington University shows that almost one-third of people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic suffered from peripheral neuropathy.
Peripheral neuropathy, which can be either short-term or long-term, is a condition in which damage to the nerves causes numbness, weakness, and pain.
Published in the peer-reviewed PAIN journal, the research was conducted on 1,556 people on the Washington University campus who tested for COVID over a period of 90 days.
The study group consisted of people who tested positive while people who tested negative were put in the control group with a ratio of 1:2. One in 16 among those who tested positive and were diagnosed with neuropathy reported persistent symptoms two weeks after COVID infection and lasting up to 90 days after testing positive.
The senior investigator and chief of clinical research at the Washington University Pain Center, Simon Haroutounian explained that the study suggested that the Sars-Cov-2 virus may have lingering effects on peripheral nerves since it found that nearly 30% of patients who tested positive for COVID also reported neuropathy problems at the time of their diagnosis.
The symptoms for 6% to 7% of those patients persisted for at least two weeks and up to three months.
Haroutounian pointed out that peripheral neuropathy is associated with several viral infections – such as HIV and shingles – because viruses can damage nerves, stressing out the importance of understanding whether a viral infection is associated with an increased risk of neuropathy.
He described the situation with HIV, where they needed several years after the AIDS epidemic began to realize it was causing neuropathy so many people went undiagnosed and untreated for the pain associated with the condition.
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