Researchers explain: What causes long Covid breathing problems

Researchers at Stanford University have found that people are experiencing breathing problems post Covid19 due to a condition known as lung fibrosis in which the damaged lungs form scar tissue that makes it difficult for the lungs to expand and contractThe research showed that overactivity of genes that regulate inflammation and immune responses leads to lung fibrosisLong Covid cases can be severely debilitating and resistant to treatment said Gerlinde Wernig Assistant Professor of pathology at Stanford UniversityWhats worse lung function can continue to decline even without a new Covid19 infection Wernig saidThe finding published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers hope that one day targeted drugs could intervene to quell the genes behind the damageIn the study the team started by looking at lung tissue samples from five Covid19 patients who had symptoms of the disease such as shortness of breath for one or more months The lungs of people who had symptoms after infection with SARSCoV2 looked like the lungs of people with endstage pulmonary fibrosisBy analysing single cells from the patients tissue samples the scientists also saw similarities in the pattern of RNA production which can hint a cells overall function between samples of tissue from long Covid patients and samples from patients with pulmonary fibrosisWe saw this same pattern across all human Covid lung samples Wernig saidAs with other lung infections the initial Covid19 infection in the lungs kicked off an inflammatory process In the case of longCovid patients however the immune dysfunction keeps going long after the virus is gone similar to what happens in chronic pulmonary fibrosisTo test whether lung fibrosis could be firmly connected to Covid infections they looked at lung fibrosis in mice infected with a SARSCoV2like virus and found significant increases in fibrosis and immune dysfunctionInnate immune cells go crazy after that infection Wernig said referring to the part of the immune system that forms the first line of defence against pathogensIn a mouse model engineered to more closely represent human biology researchers showed that when the mice contracted SARSCoV2 scarring in the lung tissues shot up as did levels of immune cells interleukin6 CD47 and pJUN There was also a bright side to these experimentsWhen we did the same experiments but blocked CD47 and Il6 we saw very little fibrosis Wernig said This hints at possible treatments for long Covid involving drugs that carry out targeted immune blockadesAlso Read Mumbai All wards have Covid19 cases only one criticalThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever