| | | Doctors now have a deeper understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 damages lung tissue. White blood cells discover the virus and attract other immune cells to the site, which attack the infected lung cells and kill them. They leave behind cell detritus, which clog up the alveoli. If the body isn’t able to gain control over the reaction to the infection, acute lung failure looms.
But other organs can also be damaged as a result of the infection. The more SARS-CoV-2 patients are treated around the world, the clearer it has become just how comprehensive the attack staged by the virus is.
According to data from China, around 20 percent of patients requiring hospitalization suffer damage to the heart. It remains unclear whether the virus goes after heart muscle cells directly or if damage to the coronary blood vessels is to blame. The blood clotting function is also disrupted, leading to clumps that could result in heart attacks, lung embolisms and strokes.
The kidneys of some hospitalized patients also come under attack, as evidenced by blood or protein in urine samples. As a result, dialysis machines have had to join ventilators in ICUs devoted to treating COVID-19 patients.
Doctors have likewise observed brain inflammation and seizures in some patients. The virus apparently advances all the way into the brain stem, where important control centers are located, such as the one responsible for breathing. The virus likely gets to the brain via the mucous membrane inside the nose and the olfactory nerve. This could also be the reason that many patients temporarily lose their sense of smell.
SARS-CoV-2 can also attack the digestive tract, with patients complaining of bloody diarrhea, nausea and abdominal pain.
Doctors have also reported a possible link between COVID-19 and a rare blood vessel syndrome in children called Kawasaki Disease. In Britain, the disease has even killed a few children who became infected with SARS-CoV-2. The disease involves the inflammation of blood vessels throughout the body and can damage the heart.
Doctors now believe that SARS-CoV-2 attacks tissue and organs virtually everywhere in the body. And the disease can also apparently leave behind long-term damage. Chinese researchers have examined the blood of patients and found that even after the infection has passed, certain blood values remain abnormal for an extended period. Despite the virus no longer being present in the body, for example, their livers still don’t exhibit normal functionality.
The lungs, too, likely suffer lasting damage in severe cases. “When inflammation does not subside with time, then it becomes essentially scarring in the lungs, creating long-term damage,” says Mortman, the doctor from George Washington University Hospital.
It is still too early for a comprehensive understanding of the long-term consequences of COVID-19. But doctors are familiar with cytokine storms and acute lung failure from other severe infections. Some of the survivors of the first SARS epidemic, for example, experienced limited lung functionality for up to 15 years after the illness.
spiegel.de |
|
