Nature Microbiology: High numbers of viruses in the lungs lead to high mortality from COVID-19

The new study led by researchers at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine showed that the number or viral load of the lower respiratory tract of people who died of COVID-19 was on average 10 times that of severely ill patients who survived

"Our findings indicate that the body cannot cope with the large number of viruses that infect the lungs, which is largely the cause of deaths from COVID-19 in the pandemic," the lead author of the study and a part-time job in the Department of Medicine, New York University Langone School of Health Professor Imran Sulaiman, MD said

He pointed out that the current guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discourage the use of antiviral drugs such as remdesivir for critically ill patients who require mechanical ventilation

Although some people have previously worried that the virus may cause the immune system to attack the body's own lung tissue and cause dangerous levels of inflammation, the researchers found no evidence in the research team that this is the main cause of death from COVID-19

Researchers said that so far, the coronavirus has caused more than 4 million deaths worldwide

Sulaiman said that this new study was published online on August 31 in the journal Nature Microbiology and aims to clarify the role of secondary infections, viral load, and immune cell populations in COVID-19 mortality

To investigate, the researchers collected bacterial and fungal samples from the lungs of 589 men and women hospitalized at NYU Langone Hospital in Manhattan and Long Island

The results of the study showed that compared with the surviving COVID-19 patients, the immunochemical produced by the dead patients was reduced by an average of 50%

"These results indicate that the adaptive immune system is preventing it from effectively fighting the coronavirus

He warned that the researchers only studied coronavirus patients who survived the first two weeks of hospitalization

The research team next plans to observe how the microbial community and immune response in the lungs of coronavirus patients change over time

Imran Sulaiman, Matthew Chung, Luis Angel, Jun-Chieh J.