Red spots, chilblains, urticaria, welts … are we facing a new symptom of the coronavirus?

It is not the first time that a virus takes advantage of it makes us sick to attack, incidentally, our skin. So does the well-known measles or exotic dengue, for example. But when a virus is as new and unknown as Covid-19, we have to be very attentive to the signals to act as soon as possible … and it seems that our skin could be sending some of those signals to people infected with the coronavirus along with classic symptoms (such as fever or cough) and more symptoms strangers (such as loss of sense of taste and smell).

This was recently verified by an Italian study, which describes how 20% of 88 patients who had tested positive for coronavirus also had dermatological lesions of the most varied, from reddish or purple spots to welts, hives, granites similar to those of chickenpox …

“Although the sample of patients in the study is small, 20% of them had this type of skin manifestations, it is significant enough that from the Spanish Academy of Dermatology and Venereology we launched in Spain a multicenter and national study to collect and analyze all the dermatological lesions that we are seeing in patients with positive coronavirus infection ”, explains the Dr. José Luis López Estebaranz, one of the specialists participating in the CovidPiel study.

The objective of the Spanish study, which is in the sample collection phase for subsequent analysis, has an immediate objective (describe the multiple dermatological manifestations that the coronavirus appears to be capable of producing) and another more ambitious one that will take much longer to arrive: discovering which are the most common injuries, in what stage of the disease they occur and who have more ballots to develop them.

"In hospitals we are seeing rashes that usually appear at the beginning of the disease. But also other more serious manifestations, because it seems that this coronavirus produces an increase in coagulation and ischemic changes, causing the arterial blood supply to gradually and gradually decrease, even causing lesions with necrosis on the fingers and toes in very severe patients, ”says Dr. López Estebaranz.

Although both this study and the conclusions of international dermatology experts are still at the first stage, it seems correct that to complete the table of symptoms that make up the coronavirus infection Let's also try to understand the changes it causes in our skin … and that we take it into account when thinking about the coronavirus.

The skin is the largest organ in the body and many diseases manifest themselves cutaneously and, from what we are seeing, the coronavirus also does so. In the framework of the present crisis it would not hurt check it more often (without falling into obsession), after all, it is at a glance, because many of these dermatological manifestations (hives, vesicles like those of chickenpox, blisters on the feet and hands …) occur in patients who do not have any another symptom of coronavirus. "We have to pay attention to the skin as well as to the fever and the same to the cough”, Concludes the expert.