"Immune system in healthy people causes havoc as a result of Covid-19?
Those with severe cases of Covid-19 are experiencing a clinical phenomenon known as a “cytokine storm”.
The term describes an overproduction of immune cells and their activating compounds, known as cytokines.
A surge of activated immune cells can enter the lungs.
This becomes too much of a good thing.
When the immune system overacts to the infection, the strength of the immune response can put a healthy person at risk for complications associated with respiratory illness.
This would see the immune system causing damage to the lungs rather than the virus itself.
A cytokine storm is also consistent with the disease that SARS caused previously.
It is also consistent with what is seen in people who are severely ill with influenza virus infections.
To reiterate: Cytokines are proteins used by the immune system as alarm beacons.
Cytokines recruit immune cells to the site of infection to kill off the infected tissue in a bid to save the rest of the body.
Humans rely on our immune systems but during a runaway coronavirus infection, when the immune system dumps cytokines into the lungs without any regulation, this culling becomes a free-for-all.
How is the novel coronavirus Covid-19 different from other coronaviruses?
The coronavirus causes respiratory infections.
Humans are infected every year by the common coronaviruses, which usually cause mild, uncomplicated upper respiratory infection.
But Covid-19
can cause acute respiratory distress.
This means that the patient’s lungs
can accumulate fluid, which is more typical of pneumonias.
It’s respiratory failure or cardio-respiratory issues that lead to death.
The Covid-19 viral infection
can cause lungs to be flooded with fluids?
As the site of gas exchange, lungs experience a lot of blood flow in them
Airways have to be relatively dry so that a healthy person can breathe in air, which gets transferred to red bloods cells and carried to the rest of the body.
But during infections or immune responses, the tissue becomes damaged.
Fluid that’s normally contained in the blood vessels starts to leak into airways.
That build-up of fluid in lungs is what
can cause breathing distress, because the lungs are not exchanging gas very efficiently.
Cytokine storms
can have other effects on the lungs, such as inflammation.
Kidney failure might also occur, and the stomach and liver might be impacted as well.
For a more in-dept read on how the Covid-19 virus
can impact the rest of the body, National Geographic has written a detailed article on what happens to the human body beyond the lungs when the novel coronavirus attacks.
Top photo via Pixabay
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"
Läser man igenom de rapporter som finns så verkar viruset orsaka överaktivt imunförsvar som i sin tur orsakar värre skador vilket
kan leda till död hos de svårt sjuka.
Det finns ett flertal rapporter om detta och den jag citerade ur är enbart en av många.
Vill du veta mer får du söka själv..
https://mothership.sg/2020/02/what-happens-infected-coronavirus/
