Thursday, September 03, 2020

Covid: Lung or Blood Disease?

Should we be surprised that CDC was not part of this activity?

Earlier this summer, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee set about crunching data on more than 40,000 genes from 17,000 genetic samples in an effort to better understand Covid-19. Summit is the second-fastest computer in the world, but the process — which involved analyzing 2.5 billion genetic combinations — still took more than a week.

When Summit was done, researchers analyzed the results. It was, in the words of Dr. Daniel Jacobson, lead researcher and chief scientist for computational systems biology at Oak Ridge, a “eureka moment.” The computer had revealed a new theory about how Covid-19 impacts the body: the bradykinin hypothesis. The hypothesis provides a model that explains many aspects of Covid-19, including some of its most bizarre symptoms. It also suggests 10-plus potential treatments, many of which are already FDA approved. Jacobson’s group published their results in a paper in the journal eLife in early July....

Lotsa stuff follows, the most interesting being that these guys ID Covid as a BLOOD disease, not a LUNG disease.

There are also a lot of potential treatments--yet to be tested--but all approved medications.

2 comments:

Kathleen1031 said...

I'm not a medical person. But this would explain what the nurses in NYC were saying about patients, that people would come in with clear lungs but sats in the 80's or lower. They might be sitting up feeling okay, talking on their cell phones, when it would be decided they needed to go on a vent based on their numbers. They would be put on vents, and many went on to die. Or why a doctor in NYC concluded that Covid presented more as hypoxia, something you would see in altitude sickness, not a lung problem.
And one could wonder why blood clots would be a problem with Covid. A sick person can always develop that condition, but not most people who are in bed with the flu. That's atypical.
One thing I did read and which may make sense. People should take aspirin. If you take blood thinners you need to be careful, but if people get sick, aspirin seems a good choice rather than Tylenol, etc.

Kathleen1031 said...

Sick with what might be Covid, I mean.