Why the COVID-19 is surprisingly unique and painfully well known

For Abbey Knowles, headaches and fatigue were just the beginning.

She immediately felt a tight band on her chest, making breathing difficult. She had pain in her upper body, and doctors checked her for a heart attack. Her blood pressure began to oscillate-too low, too high-leaving dizziness and nausea. Her heart became so foggy that she couldn’t read the book.

Symptoms diminish gradually and only return. “You would think,’Oh, I’m done with that bit, great’,” Knowles says. “Then it will come back three days later.” Knowles, who lives in Reading in England at the age of 38 after more than three months of illness, said that COVID-19 is a disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. It was introduced for the evaluation of long-term complications. Meanwhile, her husband Dan, who became ill towards the end of March, had high fever and more typical COVID-19 symptoms for a few days, but he quickly recovered.

Knowles and the experience of many COVID-19 patients point out how coronaviruses can be terribly unpredictable. Some have a debilitating illness, while others feel almost uncomfortable. Some people have respiratory illness, Neurological symptoms (SN: 6/12/20), such as Loss of smell (SN: 5/11/20). Critically ill patients can be life threatening Blood clot (SN: 6/23/20), add vascular symptoms to the list. Some patients have difficulty returning to normal after getting sick.

And how this disease progresses with age can be confusing. The severe cases of COVID-19 Rare among children, But some have a dangerous inflammatory syndrome that can appear weeks after infection (SN: 6/3/20). The elderly remain at the highest risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, while young adults remain Get seriously illAlso(SN: 3/19/20). The group generally tends to be very young and very old with viral infections (one notable exception: the 1918 flu pandemic that killed healthy young adults at a high rate).

In the six months since China reported unexplained pneumonia, doctors are describing a catalog of health hazards that are rapidly increasing from what is now called COVID-19. In some respects, the disease is prominent. The extent of the impact of COVID-19 and the difficulty in predicting how severely one person will be affected is unusual. However, some of the symptoms and patterns associated with COVID-19 are painfully well known.

The fight against COVID-19 — Today, more than 10.5 million people have been identified worldwide and more than 500,000 have died of this disease — to see how COVID-19 works at all levels, from the microscope to the top. You will understand well. Moving from the cellular perspective to the social perspective, let’s look at how COVID-19 affects it compared to other viral infections and the harm they do.

Peer cells

A study of how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with the immune system revealed some surprises, with one explanation for why COVID-19 can be severe.

During the virus infection, the infected cells made demands for weapons and reinforcements, says Benjamin Tenever, a virologist at the Ikern School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, New York City. The cells release interferon, a protein that “tells all adjacent cells that a virus is present”, he says. Cells also send out proteins called chemokines that attract immune cells to the site of infection.

The virus strives to overcome both demands. For example, the flu weakens enough to replicate and move to another host, but not to the extent that one cannot eventually get rid of the infection. SARS-CoV-2 does something different. It blames the weapon call breaks, but puts gas on the reinforcement call, says tenOever.

In experiments with cell, animal, blood, and tissue samples from COVID-19 patients, tenOever and his colleagues found low levels of interferon. But Chemokine levelsBringing an immune cell cavalry was high, researchers report on May 28 cell..

“That doesn’t make sense,” says tenOever, a tired demand for consolidation “not necessarily benefit the virus.” However, it can cause major problems for patients. Overexpression of immune cell strength causes inflammation and cell death, and can lead to more inflammation and cell death. This severe immune response can damage lungs and other organs.

The way SARS-CoV-2 interacts with the immune system sets it apart from other viruses, but SARS-CoV (the coronavirus behind the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome) is also a weapon. Asks for reinforcements, says tenOever. And the Ebola virus does something similar, but for different reasons. The virus is great at blocking the calling of weapons, but it rapidly damages so many cells during infection that eventually causes a lot of inflammation, even if it doesn’t soften the demand for strengthening. I will.

From person to person

Many of the symptoms and complications associated with COVID-19 are also found in other viral infections. For example, the loss of odor, called odorlessness, occurs when you are infected with the coronavirus, which causes the common cold, and other viruses that target the upper respiratory tract. Fatigue is common in viral diseases such as mononucleosis and is usually caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. Blood clotting problems can occur in critically ill patients with certain viral infections.

However, it is unusual that the range of symptoms and complications associated with this disease is very wide. “We see a very wide range of impacts,” said COVID-19, says Anna Person, an infectious disease doctor at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

One knows COVID-19 as a doctor and as a patient. Sunday in late April, when an avid runner fell ill, began like any other and included a 7-mile run. But that night, “there was a terrifying wave,” he said. There were signs of chills and fever. “It hit me like a sledgehammer.”

During the COVID-19 bout of Person, she was temporarily unable to smell or taste (coffee tasted like water), and she experienced problems of confusion and memory. Two months later, she slowly begins to feel her identity, but it takes longer than expected. She started running again, but still fights the intense fatigue. Still, her case is considered mild because she did not have to be hospitalized.

The risk of severe morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 increases with age and certain underlying illnesses, but younger, healthier people also use ventilators and stroke. What is hard to predict, according to Parson, is “while there are studies reporting specific risk factors for more serious illnesses, there are many exceptions.”

Severe illnesses, from dengue to the West Nile, from measles, Varicella and shingles (SN: 2/26/19). Also, with respiratory viruses such as influenza, “there is always a subset of people who develop very serious infections,” said Preeti Malani, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. These patients can have acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, a deadly condition that deprives organs of oxygen. But with COVID-19, she says, “obviously it’s a very different scale.”

Even those who appear to have passed the SARS-CoV-2 infection without Snifle will never come out intact. The researchers evaluated 37 people who were positive for coronavirus but had no symptoms two weeks before the trial or while being quarantined at the Wanzhou People’s Hospital in China. 21 were abnormal Features of the lungs Seen in COVID-19 Pneumonia Patients, Researchers Report Online June 18 Natural medicine..

As a result, asymptomatic as well as symptomatic people can have long-term consequences. “One of the concerns is whether these people will be left with lungs that are not functioning properly,” says Marani.

Social scenario

There is still much to learn about why individuals are more or less at risk of developing complications and long-term damage from COVID-19. However, in certain scenarios, the question of high risk of infection is largely gone. The virus spreads primarily by respiratory droplets produced by coughing, sneezing, or talking People are in close contact (SN: 6/18/20).

“Who are most likely to be in close contact with other people at all times, unable to be isolated from respiratory droplets, and unable to work from home?” Infectious Diseases Doctor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha Jasmine Marceline says. They are “often a minority community.”

The racial and ethnic disparities in terms of work that can access health care, own a home, and can be done in remote areas are: COVID-19 causes illness and death (SN: 4/10/20). Higher social vulnerabilities (socioeconomic status, minority status, access to housing and transportation, and other factors) indicate higher levels of social vulnerability in the US county level analysis. Diagnosed as COVID-19 Researchers report online at high risk of death from illness June 23 General Internal Medicine Journal..

Most patients admitted using COVID-19 at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center come from a community of colors, Parson says. “It’s racism at work.”

This isn’t the first outbreak to overburden the Black, Latin American, and Native American communities. For example, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic was more dangerous for these Americans. And despite less infections, black Americans Was likely to die Researchers report online June 5th, from white Americans from the 1918 pandemic flu Internal medicine annual report.. “These problems have existed for centuries,” says Marcelin. Inequalities “permeate every aspect of society, including healthcare and how to respond to healthcare crises.”

After all, COVID-19 leaves us with both dejavu and the feeling that we are burning new territory. Some of the things that are making a lot of difference to this experience are our first experience of a pandemic of this magnitude, as our bodies face viruses we have never seen before. “We’re learning at work,” because coronaviruses are new, Marcelin says. “That makes me much more afraid to think.”