Introduction:
COVID-19 or coronavirus disease is taken into account an interesting ultimatum towards universal health, it originally arose from Wuhan, China. It is a dreadful disease which damages lungs, heart, brain, liver, kidney and about 1-5% patients die. Apart from these organs, musculoskeletal system is also affected and presented with muscle and joint pain in covid. Most of the time this is not serious, but it significantly reduced the quality of life.
What’s pain? Pain is an unpleaseant emotional and sensory experience that is associated with tissue injury or resembles it. Muscle pain, abdominal pain, myalgia, arthralgia, and headache are some common manifestations of COVID-19 (Wadyadharma et al., 2020).
How common is muscle and joint pain in Covid?
Myalgia or muscle pain is one among the foremost common symptoms in patients of COVID-19. A non-experimental study which incorporates 60,243 patients from 10 different countries betrayed that muscle pain or myalgia occurred in 37% of the patients. Another non-experimental study in China revealed that the frequency of muscle pain was 22% from 8796 patients (Zhang et al., 2020). But the manifestation of myalgia was on a better percentage in Europe that’s 60% from 1532 patients. Arthralgia or joint pain is another common symptom in COVID-19 patients. It occurs with a frequency of 11% to 16% in COVID-19 patients. within the study of Cipollaro, the prevalence of muscle and joint pain was 16% in approximately 11,946 patients (Zhang et al., 2020).
What are the causes of pain?
Clinical abstracts of muscle pain or myalgia caused by coronavirus were more probably to be encountered by adult individuals instead of infants or children. A study revealed that myalgia or muscle pain categorizes as a striated muscle injury (Zhang et al., 2020). A condition during which patients experience a rise in serum creatinine kinase level and musculoskeletal pain is understood as a striated muscle injury. 10% of patients of COVID-19 experience striated muscle injury. In non-severe patients, the manifestation of striated muscle injury was found only 5%, while in severe cases, 20% of patients were reported (Zhang et al., 2020).
Patient’s perspective:
New research of 2021 revealed that patients with muscle, bone, and joint pain experienced exacerbated symptoms of COVID-19 during quarantine. consistent with the study of the University of East Anglia , patients with muscle and joint pain experienced increased symptoms during government lockdown (Wilton surgery center, 2021). Customarily, doctors prescribe physical activity and medications to manage joint, bone, and muscle pain.
The researchers found that:
- About 50% of patients said that their muscle, bone, and joint problems have exacerbated since quarantine.
- About 30% of patients said that they were required to go to the rheumatology department within the hospital or primary health physician (Wilton surgery center, 2021).
- About 40% of patients required help from others to access their medication, but 80% said that they might access medication is with none difficulty.
- Other outcomes manifest that COVID-19 may be a pandemic disease and a serious challenge to the welfare and health of both older and younger people (Wilton surgery center, 2021).
References
- Widyadharma, I.P.E., Sari, N.N.S.P., Pradnyaswari, K.E. et al. Pain as clinical manifestations of COVID-19 infection and its management in the pandemic era: a literature review. Egypt J Neurol Psychiatry Neurosurg 56, 121 (2020)
- COVID-19 Quarantine Worsens Bone, Muscular and Joint Pain. (2021). Retrieved 19 May 2021, from https://wiltonsurgerycenter.com/news/covid-19-quarantine-worsens-bone-muscular-and-joint-pain
