ISLAMABAD, Sept. 26 (ONLINE): As we continue to live with COVID-19, patients and doctors will learn more about the reasons infections can range from asymptomatic to very serious. Many researchers and doctors believe inflammation is the cause of severe COVID. This is due to the virus causing a “cytokine storm” that can adversely affect the organs in a patient’s body, including the heart and lungs.
New research from Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin, however, is pointing to bacterial pneumonia as the cause of many severe COVID deaths. Deceased COVID patients studied were not shown to have experienced inflammation at all. Instead, the researchers, using machine learning to analyze data, found that half of the severely ill COVID patients who required a ventilator had bacterial pneumonia as a secondary infection. They did not find evidence of a cytokine storm in these patients; instead of dying from organ damage or failure due to COVID, they died of pneumonia.
“Critically ill patients who recovered from pneumonia were more likely to live,” said Benjamin D. Singer, MD, senior author of the study, professor of pulmonary medicine, and a Northwestern Medicine pulmonary and critical care doctor in Chicago.
Other researchers don’t debunk the idea of cytokine storms in COVID, however. Cytokines are chemicals that are released when a person’s immune system overreacts to an infection. Too many cytokines are toxic and can cause organ failure. In COVID-19, cytokines have been thought to release inflammation that can circulate through the body and cause death.
“Critically ill patients who recovered from pneumonia were more likely to live.”
Dr. Benjamin D. Singer, Northwestern Medicine
A new study from CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology in Chandigarh, India, and M. M. Engineering College in Ambala, India, for example, found that controlling this inflammatory factor is essential in order to treat COVID. Italian researchers further find that hyperinflammation plays a definite role in severe illness in COVID patients.
Additional new research does show that specific bacteria can cause negative outcomes for COVID patients. A study from the New York University Grossman School of Medicine found that bacteria from the gut may move into the blood of patients with severe COVID. “Bacteria circulating in the blood can accelerate complications in these COVID patients,” said study co-author Jonas Schluter, PhD of the Institute for Systems Genetics and assistant professor of microbiology at NYU Grossman in New York City.
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