The story of Chinese doctors with coronaviruses whose skin darkened

Probably in recent days they have seen his photos on social networks or heard about his case in the news. Yi Fan and Hu Weifeng are two Chinese doctors who became ill with the new coronavirus and while they were hospitalized suffered a strange darkening of your skin color.

Both Yi Fan and Hu Weifeng have 42 years old and both worked at the Wuhan Central Hospital until they were diagnosed with COVID-19 on January 18.

Due to the complications of the disease that keeps much of the world on alert, both doctors were taken to Wuhan Lung Hospital for treatment and were later transferred twice to other health facilities, according to the Chinese television channel CCTV. (via Metro).

Doctor Yi managed to improve his health after staying 39 days connected to a life support machine called ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation). While Doctor Hu has been bedridden for more than 90 days and is still weakened after undergoing therapy with that same machine from February 7 to March 22, according to his treating doctor, CCTV Dr. Li Shusheng.

But obviously what is striking in the case of these doctors is not their battle against COVID-19 but, in parallel to their fight with that disease, their skin darkened noticeably.

For reference, you can review photos of both doctors below before and during your hospital stay.

But why did both doctors undergo this strange change in appearance?

Until now, no conclusive sample has been given that establishes with certainty what happened to these doctors. However, there are several hypotheses that are handled.

First of all, Dr. Li Shusheng, who is in charge of treating both health professionals, explained to Chinese television that Li and Hu’s skin had darkened. due to a type of medication that was given to them during the early stages of their treatment and whose secondary effect would be the darkening of the skin color.

The specialist did not identify the medication but stated that both doctors were expected to regain their normal skin tone when their livers they will begin to function normally. Since all this would be linked to liver complications.

This has led some to speculate that doctors were treated with hydroxychloroquine, since this medicine is being used experimentally in some parts of the world to try to fight COVID-19 and among its various side effects is the mucocutaneous hyperpigmentation in some sectors of the body.

On the other hand, according to The Sun, Song Jianxin, an expert in infectious diseases at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said that the organs of the doctors would have been damaged while receiving treatment for the symptoms of COVID-19.

Thus, the iron that would have already been stored in your livers, would have flooded your blood vessels since the organ was not working properly.

But since there is still no evidence to categorically support any of these assertions, the spread of the case of both doctors has led to the beginning of outlining other theories.

For example, as collected from Hypertextual, the youtuber behind the S channel of Siensia, Álvaro Carmona, made a thread on Twitter where roughly it raises that the health professionals could have been treated with something called inhibitory molecules of the kinases inducible by salt (SIK, for its acronym in English). Something that would serve to “reduce inflammation and at the same time leave a trail of hyperpigmentation.”

However, Carmona himself acknowledges that this is only one deduction based on a few data available on the internet and therefore is not something accurate.

In that sense, the only thing we know clearly until now is that something caused the skin of these doctors to change color during the treatment they both underwent to deal with the symptoms of COVID-19. And while Doctor Yi is already in a better state of health, Doctor Hu continues to fight for his life.