That's right folks. I was diagnosed with COVID19 also known as Kung Flu. Ive had it since last week. Ive had flus worse than this. But I find the complete lack of smell disturbing. Anyone have a cold or flu that knocked out their sniffer?
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I have a general question for all the pedes here. Are some of these studies politicized? I'm 27 years old and apparently alot of young people like myself after getting covid we supposedly will have some kind of cardiac inflammation that persists after recovering from COVID? That just feels like bullshit because youd think wed feel our heart being inflamed. But then i read that it can be asymptomatic.
In all honesty, a lot of physicians don’t read a lot of papers unless they are dealing with it predominantly. That being said, I believe I read a good amount. Some things to consider:
Publication bias- we typically don’t publish things that “don’t work” or are “negative results.” So what this essentially translates to is that papers are more likely to be published if they find one or two cases of Covid causing some sort of perceived complication. It can make a certain complication like Kawasaki‘s disease for example look way more common than it really is.
As for secondary heart complications, there are a good amount of upper respiratory infections that can affect the heart. For example Coxsackie virus is notorious for causing pericarditis (which may or may not be symptomatic- though asymptomatic is equivalent to better very positive outcomes). Covid seems to not so much affect the heart directly but rather cause a hypercoagulable state, which is essentially increasing your body’s ability to form clots. This is actually a pretty common phenomenon with inflammation but not a common complication of Covid. A lot of these cases make the news because they are interesting and more likely to grab attention. That does not mean that they do not happen but rather that the media doesn’t report on the 99.9% of people who are either asymptomatic or heal up perfectly fine.
As the saying goes— Never trust a case study. Meta analysis is the highest standard but it takes years so we can’t expect them anytime soon.
What are you thoughts about covid 19 invading heart cells through the ace2 receptor. If that is true youd think that would cause the immune system to attack the heart.
So ACE2 is predominantly found in the lungs, and in smaller concentration in the colon (small intestine) and arteries/heart. This agrees nicely with the perceived effects— lung problems, diarrhea (from colon involvement), and vascular disease (that hypercoagulable stuff I was talking to you about). BUT just because it enters those cells through that mechanism does not imply that it causes the immune system to attack the heart. That would be an autoimmune reaction.
It is believed that in any kind of inflamed state (such as that with infections, cancer, etc) there is a higher chance of autoimmune conditions. Basically the inside of cells look “foreign” to the immune system because the immune system largely sees the outside only. In inflammatory conditions, those things on the inside get exposed to the outside. Current evidence does not support the notion of a statistically significant increase in autoimmune conditions as a complication of Covid compared to any other infection. So it is not believed that Covid increases your chances of an autoimmune condition more than any other virus as of right now.
Most damage done by viruses is by the virus replicating in the cells. (As opposed to bacteria that produce exo and endo toxins). Think of the host cell like a plastic bag— the more times the virus replicates, the greater the chance that cell pops and causes a local inflammatory response (not usually large enough/systemic of an inflammatory response that induces autoimmune conditions though).
Ahh this was insightful and this makes sense. Since youre seeing these covid patients i have to ask, do you ever get a follow up from them after they recover? Their heart? Lungs? Kidney function?