The director of inpatient dermatology at NYU Langone Health in New York City warn adults of rare COVID-19 complication.

COVID-19
(Photo : Reutersconnect)
A doctor, wearing a protective mask and a protective suit, works in a Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where patients suffering from the coronavirus disease

Dr. Alisa Femia, director of inpatient dermatology at NYU Langone Health in New York City, and her colleagues published in The Lancet the result of their study on a rare COVID-19 complication. This is usually experienced by children but recent data shows that it also showed in adults. 

Dr. Femia was looking at the chart of a 45-year-old along with different photos. The man had been taking care of his wife who tested positive for COVID-19.

However, the man has shown common symptoms that occur in children who are experiencing multi-system inflammatory symptoms for children of MIS-C. 

The man exhibited dusky-red circular patches on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. Dr. Femia also observed that the 45-year-old man's eyes were pink, and his lips were extremely chapped.

It was also found out that the man's body was erupting with the kind of inflammation that children with MIS-C commonly experienced. 

This condition is now called as "Multi-Inflammatory Syndrome for Adults or MIS-A." There are a few dozen individuals or adults who experienced this complication. In fact, Dr. Sapna Bamrah Morris, clinical lead for the Health Care Systems and Worker Safety Task Force which is part of the CDC's Covid-19 response task force, reported around 27 cases of MIS-A last week. 

"We have to get physicians realizing that. It may be rare, but we don't know. It might be more common than we think," Morris explained. She also warned other doctors and health experts that this complication might have been circulating already but not yet recorded. 

However, it is not easy to detect adults who are suffering from this complication. According to a published article in MSN Health, only those who have difficulty breathing are admitted to the hospital but the MIS-A does not exhibit this symptom. 

Typically, adults who are suffering from this complication experienced fever, chest pain, heart problems, diarrhea, or other gastrointestinal issues but not shortness of breathing. The most difficult part is that most of the time the diagnostic test for COVID-19 tends to be negative. 

They also added that MIS-A patients tested positive instead for COVID-19 antibodies which means that the adult has been infected for the virus two to six weeks ago even if they did not show any COVID-19 symptoms. This also what adds up now to the problem of health experts. 

Morris explained, "Just because someone doesn't present with respiratory symptoms as their primary manifestation does not mean that what they're experiencing isn't as a result of Covid-19." 

This confirms than other than the common symptoms for COVID-19, there are still other symptoms are not yet known about the virus. 

This complication is also life-threatening because patients may experience some kind of severe dysfunction of at least one organ like the liver or heart.

CDC reported 10 patients who experienced this organ failure were hospitalized and was put in the ICU while two of them died. 

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