Well, we found the problem, if you are going to
engineer a virus, sorry, I mean gain of function medical research, this matches the USA.
Coronavirus attacks fat tissue, scientists find
From the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus seemed to target people carrying extra pounds. Patients who were overweight or obese were more likely to develop severe COVID-19 and die.
Although these patients often have health conditions such as diabetes that increase their risk, scientists have become increasingly convinced that their vulnerability has something to do with obesity itself.
Now researchers have found that the coronavirus infects both fat cells and certain immune cells in the body, triggering a harmful defensive response in the body.
“The bottom line is, ‘Oh my god, actually, the virus can directly infect fat cells,'” said Dr. Philip Scherer, a scientist who studies fat cells at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who is involved in the research. was not. ,
“Whatever is in the fat doesn’t stay in the fat,” he said. “It also affects neighboring tissues.”
The research has yet to be peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, but it was posted online in October. If the findings hold, they could shed light not only on why overweight patients are vulnerable to the virus, but also why some young adults become so ill with no other exposure.
The study authors suggested that the evidence may point to newer COVID treatments that target body fat.
“Maybe it’s the Achilles heel that the virus uses to evade our protective immune responses – lurking in this space,” said Dr. Vishwa Deep Dixit, professor of comparative medicine and immunology at Yale School of Medicine.
The finding is particularly relevant to the United States, which has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world. Most American adults are overweight, and 42 percent are obese. Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Alaska Native people in the US have higher rates of obesity than white adults and Asian Americans; They have also been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with the death rate nearly twice that of white Americans.
“It can contribute to serious illness,” Dr. Katherine Blish, a professor at Stanford University Medical Center and one of the report’s two senior authors. “We’re seeing the same inflammatory cytokines that I’m seeing in the blood of really sick patients that are being produced in response to infection of those tissues.”
More to read
Same story is in the New York Times but behind a paywall.