How COVID-19 damages the whole body?

Coronavirus may cause Multiple Organ Injury in human body — Coronavirus patient Source: Web

According to doctors reviewed the reports of some coronavirus patients, the COVID-19 damages not only the lungs but also the heart, liver, kidneys, nervous system, brain, digestive system, and skin. Team of doctors at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City went through their own experiences with coronavirus patients and gathered reports from other medical teams across the world.

“Physicians need to think of COVID-19 as a multisystem disease.” Coronavirus damages not only the lungs, but the kidneys, liver, heart, brain and nervous system, skin and gastrointestinal tract, doctors say in a review of reports about Covid-19 patients. https://t.co/6DwI5r4Agp

— CNN (@CNN) July 11, 2020

Their complete picture shows the COVID-19 attacks virtually on every major system of the human body, resulting in damaging organs and causing the clotting of blood, the kidneys to shed blood & protein, the heart to lose its healthy rhythm, and the skin to erupt in rashes. Similarly, it may cause dizziness, headaches, stomach pain, muscle aches, and other symptoms, along with classic respiratory symptoms like coughing and fever.

A cardiology fellow at Columbia who also worked on the review, Dr. Aakriti Gupta, stated that physicians need to think of coronavirus as a multi-system disease. There is a lot of news about blood clotting, but it is also important to realize that a considerable proportion of these patients suffer, heart, kidney, and brain damage, and physicians need to treat those conditions of patients along with the respiratory disease.

Multiple Organ Injury may occur due to Coronavirus

Much of the harm wrought by the coronavirus appears to come because of its attraction for a receptor – a type of molecular entrance into cells named as ACE2. Cells lining the blood vessels, in the pancreas, liver ducts, the kidneys, in the intestinal tract and coating the respiratory zone all covered with receptors of ACE2, which the coronavirus may use to grapple and infect cells, according to the Columbia team’s review that published in the journal Nature Medicine.

The team wrote that these discoveries suggest that multiple-organ injuries may occur due to COVID-19 at least partially because of direct viral tissue damage. Similarly, the virus’s infection also activates the immune system, such as the production of inflammatory proteins called cytokines. This inflammation may damage organs and cells, and the cytokine storm is one of the origins of severe symptoms.

Another cardiologist who worked on the review, Dr. Mahesh Madhavan, states that the fatal virus is unusual. It’s difficult not to take a step back and not be impressed by how many symptoms it has on the human body. The cause of blood clotting may depend on several mechanisms: interference with the different clotting mechanisms in the blood, direct damage of the cells lining the blood vessels.

The researchers also said that low blood oxygen due to pneumonia could make the blood more likely to clot. These blood clots can cause heart attacks and strokes or can group in the legs or lungs. They clod the kidneys of a patient and interfere with dialysis treatments required for the sickest patients. Gupta said that coronavirus patients might intubate fifteen to twenty days; a quarter need ventilator for thirty or more days and the virus affects the immune system.