Two doctors from Wuhan hard hit by Covid-19 woke up a few weeks ago from comas with darker skin. This condition could be explained by an imbalance of liver function.
On the front line in the fight against Covid-19 at Wuhan Central Hospital, and probably not sufficiently protected, doctors Yi Fan and Hu Weifeng, aged 42, contracted the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus on January 18. Their condition worsening over the days, the two practitioners were finally plunged into a coma .
Dr. Yi, a cardiologist, was bedridden for 39 days before he finally managed to beat the virus. Speaking to CCTV a few days ago from his hospital bed, Dr Yi said he had largely recovered . He pointed out in passing that this fight against the disease had, to a certain extent, traumatized him.
Dr. Hu Weifeng, a urologist, was bedridden for 99 days and underwent ECMO therapy for 45 days. This extracorporeal assistance technique is deployed as a last resort in the most severe cases of acute respiratory distress. It allows the oxygenation of the patient no longer through the physiological lung, but through an extracorporeal membrane. The doctor is now out of a coma, but his general state of health is still very poor . He is currently still in intensive care at the same hospital as Dr. Yi Fan.
If the two doctors therefore seem to recover differently, a strange health problem nevertheless seems to bring them together. Indeed, the two men came out of the coma with much darker skin. The teams of the Chinese television channel CGTN went on site to observe the phenomenon. Since then, the images have made the rounds on social networks.
But then, how to explain this darkening of the skin? It seems that the two doctors actually ended up with a significant amount of iron in the liver, which had not been able to metabolize it for too long . This can be explained either by the virus itself or (more likely) by the treatment given (unnamed drug). It was this liver deficiency that ultimately had an impact on the pigmentation of their skin.
The phenomenon is fortunately only temporary. The images presented above date from the beginning of April. A new photo released on Tuesday shows us that Dr Yi Fan's skin has since regained (almost) normal pigmentation .
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