The primary cause of death in Covids is a secondary bacterial infection, not cytokine storm 2023
According to a research, COVID-19 patients died from secondary bacterial pneumonia that did not resolve, not a “cytokine storm” as previously thought.
Pneumonia was observed in roughly half of COVID-19 patients who needed mechanical ventilation. They predicted it may potentially exceed SARS-CoV-2 mortality rates. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers found evidence that COVID-19 does not cause a “cytokine storm,” a severe immune reaction in which the body releases too many cytokines into the blood.
Cytokines are essential to immune responses, but too many at once can be damaging.
“Our study highlights the importance of preventing, looking for, and aggressively treating secondary bacterial pneumonia in critically ill patients with severe pneumonia, including COVID-19,” said study senior author Benjamin Singer, an associate professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, US.
The Journal of Clinical Investigation reported approximately half of COVID-19 patients acquire secondary ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia. Singer stated that individuals who were healed of subsequent pneumonia were more likely to survive. “Our data suggested that virus-related mortality is relatively low, but other things that happen during the ICU stay, like secondary bacterial pneumonia, offset that,” he noted.
Singer, Feinberg’s Lawrence Hicks Professor of Pulmonary Medicine, also disproved the cytokine storm idea. Singer stated “cytokine storm” signifies excessive inflammation that causes organ failure in the lungs, kidneys, brain, and other organs.
If cytokine storm were behind COVID-19 patients’ lengthy duration of stay, we would predict frequent transitions to multi-organ failure states. “We didn’t see that,” he said.
