An immune system run amok may be responsible for some COVID-19 patients faring worse than others, suggests a new international study led by immunology researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science.
In the study, published in the journal Cell on May 7 under the title, “Host-viral infection maps reveal signatures of severe COVID-19 patients,” researchers in the lab of professor Ido Amit introduce Viral-Track, a computational method they have validated to systematically detect viruses from multiple models of infection. They applied Viral-Track to lung cell samples from three mild and six severe COVID-19 cases to study how the SARS-CoV-2 virus modifies the lung cellular landscape.
They saw “a dramatic impact of the virus on the immune system of severe patients compared to mild cases,” report the authors, including researchers from the Zheng Lab at Shenzhen Third People’s Hospital in China and from Institut Pasteur in Paris.
In the lungs of patients severely affected by COVID-19, helpful alveolar macrophage immune cells appear to be replaced by a storm of harmful myeloid immune cells that intensify the impact of the virus.
“Applying Viral-Track to larger clinical cohorts could provide critical mechanistic understanding of SARS-CoV-2 interactions with its human host and devise new treatment strategies for severe patients,” Amit’s lab tweeted.
This could take the form of a drug to maintain the integrity of the helpful immune cells in the lung.
This article was first published by Israel21.
(JNS)
{Matzav.com}
Those who got the flu shot need the most rachmim. They’re in the biggest danger as the flu shot lowers immunity in the upper respiratory tract. This is what is meant by: “An immune system run amok may be responsible for some COVID-19 patients faring worse than others.”
Also, those who have an underlying medical condition and now got pneumonia from this plannedemic are in grave danger.