A normal blood-oxygen saturation is at least 95%. In most lung diseases, such as pneumonia, falling saturations accompany other changes, including stiff or fluid-filled lungs, or rising levels of carbon dioxide because the lungs can’t expel it efficiently. It’s these features that leave us feeling short of breath—not, counterintuitively, low oxygen saturation itself, says Paul Davenport, a respiratory physiologist at the University of Florida. “The brain is tuned to monitoring the carbon dioxide with various sensors,” Davenport explains. “We don’t [strongly – dgb] sense our oxygen levels.”
In serious cases of COVID-19, patients struggle to breathe with damaged lungs, but early in the disease, low saturation isn’t always coupled with obvious respiratory difficulties. Carbon dioxide levels can be normal, and breathing deeply is comfortable—“the lung is inflating so they feel OK,” says Elnara Marcia Negri, a pulmonologist at Hospital Sírio-Libanês in São Paulo. But oxygen saturation, measured by a device clipped to a finger and in many cases confirmed with blood tests, can be in the 70s, 60s, or 50s. Or even lower. Although mountain climbers can have similar readings, here the slide downward, some doctors believe, is potentially “ominous,” says Nicholas Caputo, an emergency physician at New York City Health + Hospitals/Lincoln.
Hypotheses about what causes it are emerging. Many doctors now recognize clotting as a major feature of severe COVID-19 ( Science , 24 April, p. 356). Negri thinks subtle clotting might begin early in the lungs, perhaps thanks to an inflammatory reaction in their fine web of blood vessels, which could set off a cascade of proteins that prompts blood to clot and prevents it from getting properly oxygenated.
It’s working in Rhode Island. If it’s still working in a week, the Governor will begin to relax some restrictions and see what happens. Two-week lag in results.
The head of Intensive Care at UMC Groningen, was one of the first doctors to openly describe what he and other IC doctors immediately noticed: the majority of corona patients on the ventilator are overweight. Now he also sees an opportunity to make the disease less severe in these patients.
Other studies have now confirmed what he saw on his IC: a large proportion of patients with the coronavirus are overweight. So he decided as a next step to see what role the abdominal fat plays in the course of Covid-19. “That belly fat makes a number of substances and one of the substances that is made is leptin. That is a hormone that has a number of effects. We have measured that and it also appears to be too high in those patients.”
Leptin
Normally, overweight people already have more leptin, but corona ensures that there is even more in your blood,he discovered. The main effect of leptin is that you get less hungry, but it also has a number of side effects, including thrombosis. “And that is also what we see in our patients in intensive care. That there is more thrombosis in the veins, but also in the arteries.”
The connection has yet to be demonstrated, but according to him, there are all kinds of indications that leptin plays an important role in the course of corona disease. Then the next question is: can we do something about this? Van der Voort wants to investigate this now.
He points to the drug Resveratrol, a simple dietary supplement that is simply available at the drugstore. This may reduce leptin, but it also has other beneficial effects in Covid-19. It sounds like a potential miracle cure, but he remains a bit more cautious: “I think it is a promising drug, but no studies have been done with it.” The solution may be a simple dietary supplement.
The drug has not yet been administered to patients, but based on literature and other studies, he sees a lot of potential. “This is plausible, but we still have to scientifically research and record it. Let’s not cheer too soon.”
So he’s talking to the newspapers why exactly?
I don’t know why. Nothing is for sure these days. What I know is that they are sharing this kind of information with researchers all over the world. That a journalist gets wind of it and starts asking questions is only logical I suppose.
Wait till Trump hears about this.
Hmm, some doctor muses about some observations and an OTC drug, let’s see what happened next?
You can translate the headline, and this is not at all unpredictable. At least when Trump suggests using surface decon products on human internal surfaces he ended with ‘I’m not a doctor’ , so coming from a doctor this was irresponsible. Like, Den Haag New Years Eve irresponsible.
Dutchie, I’m sure you can help with the translation but the idiom ‘hamsterproduct’?
Sharing research is not done on talk shows.
Indeed; injecting belly fat will cure it, no doubt about it.
People are idiots. The motto is ‘If it does not benefit, it will not harm’ which is true in this case, it is not a dangerous anti-malaria drug.
Hamsterproduct means a hoarding product.
People are idiots when the stray outside their area of expertise and don’t realize it.
Modesty is a stranger to him.
Oh dear, this is not going to end well.
I know that it is the declared policy of this administration to bring down the US prison population, but is this the way to implement it?:
Could be worse;
I am now reading ‘Zoönosis’, the Dutch translation of the fat book that American science journalist David Quammen wrote in 2012 about deadly diseases that are increasingly spreading to humanity, under the title ‘Spillover’. The MERS epidemic of 2012/2013 was just outside the scope and of course the current Covid-19 pandemic. Publisher Atlas Contact reissued the nearly 600-page book these days, with a red advertising sticker on it: “The book that predicted the corona pandemic.” That is not said too much.
It contains an afterword from late January: “We have made corona an epidemic.” How did we do that, according to the author? We have disrupted, polluted and destroyed the world through the unbridled growth of the world’s population and the economy, thereby disrupting the deep cohesion of numerous ecosystems. As a result, more and more viruses were forced to abandon their natural host habitats, including bats, pangolins, or camels, and resort to the billions of unprepared bodies of humans, the only species that grew all the time. It is expected that, if nothing changes, in the future new pandemics will hit the earth’s population in ever shorter time frames.
Cases and deaths forecasted to accelerate this month.
Coronavirus Live Updates: Trump Administration Models Predict Near Doubling of Daily Death Toll by June https://nyti.ms/3fjeYNB
This is the pathetic fallacy with a vengeance. Virii have no volition and are not even alive. They’re bits of debris from a faulty cell reproduction with the unfortunate characteristic that when introduced into certain compatible cells, those cells start making copies of the virus. They tend also to have the unfortunate characteristic of throwing a monkey wrench into some of the working machinery of life.
So far for a science journalist. Now you spoiled my appetite to continue reading this book…
Lucky for me that a friend loaned me the book, no damage done.
Only 6 percent of patients at one New York area health system had no chronic conditions. Hypertension, obesity and diabetes were common.
Nearly All Patients Hospitalized With Covid-19 Had Chronic Health Issues, Study Finds https://nyti.ms/3506VQR
I’m surprised that nobody picked up on this. If these results have external validity, this is the keystone, the linchpin…the frickin’ smokin’ gun.
94% of the hospitalized patients had comordidity factors. Primarily diabetes, hypertension and obesity. Those are the endangered classes of persons. The only ones that need protection. If true, blanket shutdowns are extreme overkill.