New research shows why certain Covid-19 patients are dying.
A “breakthrough finding” details why some patients with Coronavirus are becoming sicker than other patients and dying. The research reveals that Covid-19 patients with life-threatening-illness have antibodies that disable key immune system proteins called interferons, NBC News reports. Dr. Megan Ranney, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Brown University, has been treating Covid-19 patients in the emergency department since February. She says Covid-19 patients losing their lives to the disease is an issue that goes beyond a patient’s age, background, and health status.
“Why does one 40-year-old get really sick and another one not even need to be admitted?” asked Ranney. For male patients, in particular, their immune systems become weaker after being by the virus. Researchers are trying to figure out specific therapies for patients who may be extra susceptible to the disease.
According to an International study in Science, ten percent of nearly 1,000 patients who developed life-threatening pneumonia had antibodies that disable key immune system proteins called interferons. These antibodies are known as autoantibodies because they attack the body itself. Interferons weren’t found at all in 663 people with mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 infections, the outlet reports. Only four out of the 1,227 healthy patients had the autoantibodies, including 200 research centers in 40 countries.
“This is one of the most important things we’ve learned about the immune system since the start of the pandemic,” said Dr. Eric Topol, executive vice president for research at Scripps Research in San Diego. He wasn’t involved in the new research, but he said the finding is a “breakthrough.”
Interferon antibodies are the body’s first line of combat against infection. They alert and activate virus-fighting genes, said virologist Angela Rasmussen, an associate research scientist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
