COVID-19 has ceased to be a global emergency since May 5, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but addressing the death toll from the disease remains a challenge for the medical industry. The WHO report released on May 12 continued to record more than 17,000 deaths from COVID-19 globally in just the previous 28 days.
So researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois set out to find answers to why this disease, which has vaccines and treatments, remains so deadly.
The direct lethality of SARS-CoV-2 is no longer high, but the danger may come from opportunistic pathogens entering the body when a person is temporarily weakened by it (Illustration photo from the Internet)
According to Science Alert, the team looked at the records of 585 people admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, also in Illinois. All of them were patients with severe pneumonia or respiratory failure, including 190 with COVID-19.
Calculations show that in current patients, the “cytokine storm” — the fatal immune system overreaction common in COVID-19 patients from the Delta era and earlier — is no longer the top killer as expected.
Instead, severe COVID-19 patients are more likely to develop secondary ventilator-associated pneumonia. Some patients with this type of pneumonia do not respond well to treatment and it becomes a leading cause of death.
"Our data shows that the mortality associated with the virus itself is currently relatively low, but other things that happen in the ICU, like secondary bacterial pneumonia, are causing that," said pulmonologist Benjamin Singer.
The above results suggest strategies to improve treatment outcomes in the ICU, aiming to reduce mortality.
However, the authors also note that this does not mean that COVID-19 is less dangerous. According to many studies from the beginning of the pandemic, for patients with risk factors, any initial mild infection can be the "spark" that starts a series of other serious conditions. So the best way to control that initial illness, avoid infection or prevent severe progression with the tools available.
The new study was just published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
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