José Manuel NievesSEGUIR Updated: Save Send news by mail electrónicoTu name *
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Autopsies. Coins became missing more autopsies. With 4.3 million infected and more than 297.000 dead in the world, scientists do not know yet precisely how kill the coronavirus . What they were clear, however, is that if you want to understand how the disease is affecting the different organs, the most effective way is to do as many autopsies as possible.
And there, precisely, is where the problem is. As indicated by the journal “Nature”, the urgency of the situation, with thousands of sick saturating the capacity of the hospitals, has slowed down a lot the pace at which autopsies performed . Literally, there is almost no time to do them, nor hands enough to devote to the task. In addition, when dealing with an infectious disease, contact with dead bodies can still transmit the viruses need additional measures of security, which further complicates the ability to do all the autopsies that would be necessary.
unsettling Effects on the heart and kidneys
From the beginning of the pandemic, researchers worldwide have been launched in mass to study the Covid-19, a disease that primarily attacks the lungs, but also has unsettling effects on the heart, kidneys and the brain. And the locks and restraints with which the world tries to curb the pandemic have further complicated efforts to collect tissue samples that researchers need to understand how the coronavirus cause such havoc.
But the pathologists they desperately need those tissues to determine exactly what it is that is killing the patients.
what Is pneumonia? What blood clots? What a immune response mass? in Addition, why many develop kidney failure? And what happens with the children? What is certain is that, although he who gets upset, these are questions for which there are still no clear answers.
it Is very interesting about the article collection that a team of researchers from the Medical University Zunyi, China, has just published in the journal “Frontiers in Public Health”. It reviews the epidemiology, symptoms, diagnosis and current treatments that are used to treat the most severe cases of Covid-19. In other words, everything that is known today copper how it works and how it kills the coronavirus.
The important role of the immune system
In their study, the researchers highlight the important role that is the reaction exaggerated (and potentially lethal) of the immune system of infected patients. Many, in fact, die victims of what their own bodies make to try to defend yourself of the virus. The experts explain step by step what is known about how the virus infects the respiratory tract, multiplies within cells and, in more severe cases, it causes the body’s defenses trigger a genuine ” cytokine storm “, a product of an over-activation of white blood cells that, in such circumstances, release it into the blood amounts too high of those molecules whose role is to stimulate the inflammation.
The cytokine storm causes high fever, losses in the blood vessels, clotting of the blood within the body, very low blood pressure, lack of oxygen, excess of acidity in the blood and accumulation of fluid in the lungs. In such a situation so dramatic, white blood cells are “crazy” , and they attack even healthy tissue, which leads to the failure of the lungs, the heart, the liver, intestines, kidneys, and genitals. Doctors know this box as Multiple organ Dysfunction Syndrome , or MODS.
And the thing can get even worse. Sometimes, the remains of proteins and dead cells by white blood cells can get to coat the lungs with a thin layer (membrane hyaline) that hinders the absorption of oxygen. The lungs are shut off and causes an acute respiratory failure that ends the life of the patient. The greater part of the deaths by Covid-19 follow this terrible pattern.
Filter the blood in order to save the life
In their article, the researchers affirm that, in the absence of a cure, antiviral specific, the goal of treatment should be to combat the symptoms, and reduce the rate of mortality-based keep at any price functions of the organs. For example, a system of artificial purification of the blood of the liver or a kidney replacement therapy, by filtering the blood by mechanical means. Not to mention the methods to supplement or replace the function of the lungs, either through mechanical ventilation (with masks or tubes into the trachea (windpipe) or adminstrando warm, moist oxygen through a tube inserted in the nose.
Treatments generally very aggressive and do not always manage the recovery of patients.
In summary, the study explains that the patients of severe coronavirus can die in very different ways and because of the failure of lungs, heart, liver or kidneys. That is why it is so important to find out exactly how the machinery functions lethal virus. In “Nature”, the experts argue, as has already been said, by an exponential increase in the number of autopsies. For this reason, and at the same time that researchers are struggling to understand the many effects of the Covid-19 in the human body, they claim with ever greater force by the access to a greater number of patient samples.
In many hospitalas the demand for tissue increased from the early days of the pandemic, but it has proved physically impossible make the number of autopsies required. And the available samples are distributed with an eyedropper, so that there are many doctors who do not have occasion to examine it.
To determine exactly what it is that is sucedieondo in the infected organs, researchers need large numbers of samples. Even before this era of the coronavirus, autopsies respond to questions that may be vital to a patient. And now, with a new disease, unknown, the information from the autopsies could prove critical for all humanity.
