Association between COVID-19 Infection and Acute Telogen Effluvium
Author(s): Aditi Pareek* and Aakash Mishra
Abstract
COVID-19, the on-going pandemic has effected severely with the most common symptoms observed to be fever, cough, exhaustion and absence of taste sensation or olfaction are all common symptom of COVID-19.
Sore throat, aches and pains, headache, diarrhoea, maculopappular rash over skin, or discoloration of digits of upper or lower limb, red or irritated eyes, difficulties during breathing or shortness of breath, or disorientation, chest pain are some of the less prevalent ones.
Losses of speech or mobility are some of the serious symptoms that can be seen in COVID-19 infection. A total of about 258,164,425 cases, 5,158,211 deaths and many recoveries have been reported as per WHO. The recovered cases have shown various post COVID-19 sequel due to prolonged illness. Dyspnoea, insomnia, brain fogging, mi, DVT and has various skin manifestation telogen effluvium and others are seen. Non-scaring and diffuse hair loss is characteristic of acute TE, usually occurring 3 months after any stressful event like febrile illness, major surgery, nutritional deficiency and others that reasons the shedding of hair, which has been seen to last up to 6 months. TE has been seen to be associated with post SARS-CoV-2 infection. Excessive hair shedding after recovery, a hair pull test, bi-temporal widespread thinning and the absence of anisotrichosis in trichoscopy are all used to diagnose TE.
A strong association of this is marked with post SARS-CoV-2 infection. To see the association between COVID-19 infection and acute telogen effluvium in post SARS-CoV-2 recovered patients is main objective of this study. This article covers the related studies and the data.
Conclusion: SARS-CoV-2 infection is observed to be frequent and has proven to be a cause of acute telogen effluvium in post recovery patients. Hence, association between COVID-19 infection and TE as was seen in other febrile illness and systemic infection. Telogen effluvium has been noticed between thirty to ninety days after testing positive for this infection and reverting of normal hair pattern takes about 6-9 months.