Long covid may be making your periods longer and heavier

Long Covid seems to disrupt the menstrual cycle, making periods heavier and longer. This can happen due to complications linked to the characteristic of COVID-19 which modify hormone levels or cause inflammation.

Why Lonne Covid is profiding Isluse Isluse – studies suggest that this can result from the virus that hides at low levels in the body, the immune system which has missed, or even a disturbance of the intestinal microbiome.

Common symptoms include fatigue and brain fog; It was also previously linked to the disruption of the menstrual cycle, but these studies did not report the exact changes in the menstruation that occurred. They also did not reveal if these changes could occur anyway, that someone catches Covid-19, or if they occur after a short infection.

To fill this gap, Jacqueline Maybin at the University of Edinburgh, in the United Kingdom, and her colleagues recruited more than 12,000 women to respond to a survey on their reproductive health between March and June in 2021.

More than 9,000 of them had never had covid-19, defined as not testing positive for the virus or having not had associated symptoms, such as a loss of odor or dry cough. About 1,700 women had experienced an acute covid-19, where all the symptoms disappeared in a month, while the 1,000 remaining participants had a long length, which researchers have defined as having symptoms that have persisted for more than a month after a known or suspected infection.

More than half of those who have a long cocoan have said they had heavier periods than usual for them. This figure was approximately 40% in women who had an acute-19 and 35% covid among those who have never been knowingly infected.

Long Covid was also more strongly linked to periods that last more than eight days. The acute covid-19 seemed to have no effect on the duration of the period, which suggests that specific changes occur in the body with a long cocovan, rather than with the infection itself.

To discover what mechanisms can be at stake, the researchers have analyzed the circulating blood samples, collected through the menstrual cycle of 10 women with a long and 40 women who made donations before the pandemic.

This revealed that those who had a long cocoat tended to have higher levels of a certain hormone, called 5α -dihydrotestosterone – which was linked to irregular periods – during the second half of their menstrual cycle. The team has also linked a long cocvid to higher levels of inflammatory molecules called cytokines in the blood and uterine lining, collected via biopsies.

This suggests that the long cocoan can cause hormonal and immune changes that disrupt the menstrual cycle, but other studies are necessary to clarify this, explains Maybin.

In another analysis, the team noted that women with a long covid declared that they have experienced worse symptoms – such as dizzy, fatigue and muscle pain – just before and during menstruation, while nausea, headache and breathing problems tended to worsen during the phase after menstruation and before ovulation. “This is a signal that ovarian hormones can really contribute to the severity of certain symptoms,” explains Maybin.

But as the study mainly involved white women, who all lived in the United Kingdom, a high-income country, other studies are necessary to see if the results apply to more diverse populations, she said.