“All my teeth hurt, trembling from the inside”: Russians sick with Covid described new strange symptoms

Despite the fact that Covid is now considered a seasonal infection, almost the same as any other acute respiratory viral infection, people continue to get sick with coronavirus, often seriously and with dire consequences. Online communities of patients who are currently ill or are about to become ill are filled with fresh stories every day. There are those who have become infected for the sixth and even seventh time.

Meanwhile, scientists came up with not the most optimistic results of recent studies. According to their findings, they greatly miscalculated in terms of the rate of mutation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Previously, it was believed that in this sense it was far from the flu, but now it turns out that the Covid flu has overtaken it.

There are fewer and fewer stories today that this or that person has died as a result of Covid. And yet it continues to claim human lives every day. And for those who are sick, it sometimes seriously damages their health.

“It’s very strange, but after Covid, my body seemed to have forgotten how to react normally to heat and cold. And in general some fluctuations and temperature changes. For example, in the heat (+30) I generally went crazy, I somehow made it to the subway, my brain melted, my heartbeat increased. It seemed like I was going to lose consciousness. And now, despite the fact that it’s not even winter yet, but, standing on the street, I begin to tremble from the inside, my hands are covered with goosebumps, and my blood pressure and pulse are rising,” says Muscovite Maxim, who is 42 years old.

“I’m sick now, with a confirmed test,” says Anna. – Very strange sensations. Has anyone experienced the virus with severe body aches and no fever at all? The only symptom is a slight sore throat. But my body aches terribly. Every bone.”

“After my vacation in the summer, I was diagnosed with the sixth Covid,” writes Maria. – This time, taste disappeared for two days, but not smell. It was freezing for three days. And at the beginning of September, the immune system went crazy, and women’s diseases worsened. I won’t describe it, but the development is so rapid that I recommend that women get checked not once a year, as is customary, but once every three months, or monitor the slightest symptoms.”

“I have perhaps the most atypical of all the “atypical” symptoms. Has anyone encountered this or am I the only one? I’m sick now, with some kind of “mild” covid, and on the fourth day of illness, my teeth suddenly hurt – EVERYTHING! So much so that you can even climb the wall. The gums are red, the teeth are aching, they react to cold, hot, sour, etc. The pain is severe! Maybe the virus somehow hit the nerve endings of the teeth?”

…There are a lot of stories like this, but scientists don’t yet know what to expect from the virus in the future. The other day, a new publication was published in the authoritative journal Cell, where scientists admitted: they previously believed that the influenza virus mutates twice as fast as SARS-CoV-2. It turned out to be the opposite: SARS-CoV-2 mutates 2–2.5 times faster than the influenza A/H3N2 virus, 7–10 times faster than the “cold” coronaviruses 229E and NL63, and is not yet going to slow down its rate of evolution.

In their study, scientists compared the rate of mutations in those proteins that viruses use to “attach” receptors on our cells to “capture” cells and try to bypass the immune defense. For example, they compared the rate of mutations in the spike protein, more precisely, in the S1 of SARS-CoV-2 and in the HA1 protein of H3N2 (influenza virus).

Scientists analyzed the mutation rate of the influenza A (H3N2 and H1N1) HA1 protein over time, between 1968 and 2009. As a result, they found no evidence that the rate of amino acid replacement and the rate of adaptive evolution had somehow slowed down. Now we are seeing the same trend in S1 SARS-CoV-2: throughout the pandemic, the rate of evolution of the virus has not slowed down in any way, even with the advent of Omicron and its subvariants.

Scientists say immune evasion drives the evolution of many viruses. At the same time, the antigenic evolution of influenza A/H3N2 is very much ahead of many other viruses. And it turns out that the rate of evolution of SARS-CoV-2 is even faster. Therefore, they do not know whether, after Omicron, a very different version may soon appear. However, given the observed rate of mutation, it is now clear that attempts to develop new vaccines are chasing a ghost, since the virus mutates much faster than their renewal. The only option is to try to create a universal vaccine that can protect against both current and future variants of the virus.

Another conclusion: the pandemic is not going away, and the virus continues to escape from immunity, which is also nothing fun. In any case, its evolution must be carefully monitored.

However, as the famous American geneticist Dmitry Pruss told the MK columnist, the study talks about point mutations, which is not so important, because recombinations are not taken into account: “In influenza, it is the recombinants that “rule”. The rate of mutagenesis determined specifically in this article is not associated with danger, but it exists.

Most new pathogens reduce their threat level as they coevolve with their host species, but there are exceptions, and you don’t have to go far. “The Black Death,” for example, or the common example about myxomatosis in rabbits. In these cases, pathogenesis moved to a new level after decades or even centuries.

The mechanisms of change in both cases are characteristic – the borrowing of genes from other microorganisms or a chess game with the immune system that leads the immune system to a dead end. Immune pressure is the most important factor in the evolution of all coronaviruses over the past 50 years, including the new one. But this is already quite obvious. But we don’t know how things were with seasonal coronaviruses before, and we can’t compare them with the current covid, and we can’t predict whether the new virus will throw out any twists, especially.”