Shocking, Varying Immune System Response Influence COVID 19 Severity

  As a follow up to this week’s post on auto-antibodies against interferons contributing to a more severe case of COVID 19, we glance at other factors leading to more severe disease. Researchers found that patients whose viral load began declining and whose interferon alpha level did not go up tended to fare better than the opposite situation.   They also found that a complex of proteins called the inflammasome was involved in more severe infection.  Higher levels of inflammasome activation pointed towards higher severity.

            They are hoping to take this knowledge and discern who is at higher risk for severe disease so they can apply more aggressive therapies earlier in the disease’s course.  Responding to the viral diseases of 2020 and beyond requires this wisdom and skill.

Original Article:

Carolina Lucas, Patrick Wong, Jon Klein, Tiago B. R. Castro, Julio Silva, Maria Sundaram, Mallory K. Ellingson, Tianyang Mao, Ji Eun Oh, Benjamin Israelow, Takehiro Takahashi, Maria Tokuyama, Peiwen Lu, Arvind Venkataraman, Annsea Park, Subhasis Mohanty, Haowei Wang, Anne L. Wyllie, Chantal B. F. Vogels, Rebecca Earnest, Sarah Lapidus, Isabel M. Ott, Adam J. Moore, M. Catherine Muenker, John B. Fournier, Melissa Campbell, Camila D. Odio, Arnau Casanovas-Massana, Roy Herbst, Albert C. Shaw, Ruslan Medzhitov, Wade L. Schulz, Nathan D. Grubaugh, Charles Dela Cruz, Shelli Farhadian, Albert I. Ko, Saad B. Omer, Akiko Iwasaki. Longitudinal analyses reveal immunological misfiring in severe COVID-19. Nature, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2588-y

Thanks to Science Daily:

Yale University. “Immune system variation can predict severe COVID-19 outcomes.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 July 2020. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200727145822.htm>.