Severe COVID-19 disease is known to be linked to increased inflammation. However, how SARS-CoV-2 triggers that inflammation is not understood. Now, researchers show, for the first time, how COVID-19 causes severe inflammation in some people, leading to acute respiratory distress and multi-organ damage. The study found that SARS-CoV-2 can infect monocytes and macrophages. Once infected, both types of immune cells die via pyroptosis and release an explosion of inflammatory alarm signals..
Surprisingly, the study also found that antibodies developed by people with COVID-19 can sometimes lead to more inflammation, while antibodies generated by mRNA COVID-19 vaccines seem not to.
The investigators analyzed fresh blood samples from patients with COVID-19 in the emergency department at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. They compared these with samples from healthy people and patients with other respiratory conditions. They also looked at lung autopsy tissue from people who had died from COVID-19.
https://www.genengnews.com/virology/coronavirus/sars-cov-2-causes-severe-inflammation-in-some-people-heres-how/
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