Long Covvi may make your periods longer and heavier

Long Covid seems to interfere with the menstrual cycle, making periods heavier and longer. This can be added because the lingering Covid-19-related complications that change levels of hormones or cause inflammation.

Why Long Covid occurs is unclear – studies suggest that it may be the result of the virus lurking at low levels in the body, the immune system that is abused or even disruption of the intestinal microbioma.

Common symptoms include fatigue and brain fog; It has also previously been linked to disruption of the menstrual cycle, but these studies did not report the exact change to menstruation that took place. They also did not reveal where the change these changes could happen anyway, appear that someone catches Covid-19, or whether they follow a short-term infection.

To fill this hole, Jacqueline Maybin at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and her colleagues recruited more than 12,000 women to conduct a study on their redacturtif health between March and June in 2021.

More than 9000 of them had never had Covid-19, defined as not testing positively for the virus or had not had symptoms associated with it, such as the smell of smell or a dry cough. About 1700 of the women had experienced acute Covid-19, where any symptoms disappeared within a month, while the remaining 1000 participants had a long covid that the researchers defined as having symptoms lasting for more than a month after a known or suspected.

More than half of those with long Covid reported to have periods that were heavier than usual for them. This number was about 40 per. A hundred among the women who had acute covid-19, and 35 percent among those we never deliberately infected.

Long Covvi Wasso is more strongly linked to having perids that last for more than eight days. Acute Covid-19 sees no influence on period length, which suggests that specific changes on the body with long covid occur rather than with the infection itself.

To find out what mechanisms can play, the researchers analyzed samples of circulating blood, collection from across the menstrual cycle in 10 women with long covid and 40 women who gave donations before the pandemic.

This dream that with long covid they tended to have high levels of a particular hormone, called 5A-dihydrotestosterone-which have been linked to irregular periods carrying the second half of their menstrual cycle. The team also connected long covid to higher levels of inflammatory molecules called cytokines in blood and uterine compounds, collection via biopsies.

This suggests that long covid can cause hormonal and immune changes that interfere with the menstrual cycle, but further studies are needed to clarify this, Maybin says.

In another analysis, the team found that women with long Covid reported experiencing poorer symptoms – such as dizziness, fatigue and muscle pain – just before and during menstruation, while nausea, headaches and respiratory problems tended to get worse in the phase after menstruation and ovulation. “It is a signal that ovarian hormones can news to be contributing to the severity of some symptoms,” says Maybin.

But the study involved mainly white women, all of whom lived in England, a high -income country, there is a need for further studies to see that the results apply to several different populations, she says.