Taste disorder and brain fog… “Terrible diseases” that are mistakenly overlooked as “aftereffects of new coronavirus”.

At one time, the new coronavirus infected tens of thousands of people in a single day. Currently, vaccination has become widespread and things have calmed down considerably. In such a situation, problems caused by the aftereffects of the new coronavirus are now becoming a problem.

As the symptoms of the aftereffects of the new coronavirus, such as taste disorder and brain fog, have become well known, fewer people are visiting hospitals until the disease is quite advanced, and doctors are increasingly unable to make a correct diagnosis because they mistake the symptoms for aftereffects of the new coronavirus.

In the past, many people would go to the hospital as soon as they showed abnormalities in their sense of taste or cognitive impairment such as brain fog, but nowadays they often mistake it for aftereffects of the new type of coronavirus and delay seeing a doctor.

And even if they do see a doctor, the symptoms, called taste disorder or brain fog, are difficult to distinguish from symptoms of other diseases, so the examination may end with the doctor saying, “This is an aftereffect of the corona, so let’s wait and see.

An internist who runs a hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture analyzes this situation as follows.

Symptoms such as hyperthyroidism, hypoadrenocorticism, and diabetes are similar to the aftereffects of the new coronavirus, so I have seen more than 20 cases of delayed consultation and misdiagnosis, resulting in the progression of the disease. I would like people to be aware that such cases account for about 10% of those who are seen for the aftereffects of new-type coronavirus.”

These diseases are not life-threatening unless they are very serious, but if the symptoms have progressed, they require a considerable period of time for treatment.

The reason for the increase in these cases is due in part to the change in people’s lifestyles caused by the coronas.

The new coronavirus has made it difficult to go to the hospital on the day of a fever or to have a medical checkup, making early detection of the disease more difficult.

I think this is partly due to the fact that the new coronavirus has caused people to no longer have medical checkups at work and to try to cure themselves at home if they don’t have a high fever.” When the delta strain was prevalent, such cases did not occur very often, but now that the Omicron Variant is on the rise, the symptoms of the sequelae are changing. This may be one of the reasons why doctors are making more diagnostic errors.

To prevent this from happening, it is important to have a family doctor, to have a hospital where you can consult properly, and to have an attitude of relying on a second opinion when symptoms do not go away.