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Researchers identify reasons for severe corona courses - four active ingredients as bearers of hope

2021-09-14T15:10:29.425Z


Researchers now have an important finding about the reason for severe disease: the coronavirus puts cells into early retirement. But active ingredients, on the other hand, are already being tested.


Researchers now have an important finding about the reason for severe disease: the coronavirus puts cells into early retirement.

But active ingredients, on the other hand, are already being tested.

Berlin - While some people hardly notice a corona infection, others have to be treated in the intensive care unit.

But why are the diseases so different?

Researchers have now found that severe courses are caused, among other things, by so-called senescence.

The knowledge magazine

Scinexx reported

on Tuesday.

Corona causes cells to age prematurely in severe cases

Senescence is actually a meaningful function of our body.

It switches off old cells so that they do not mutate and cause cancer.

But the coronavirus can reverse this function for the worse.

Soyoung Lee from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and colleagues found that the coronavirus initially puts the respiratory cells into a premature dormant state in severe cases.

This damages the tissue and releases inflammatory messengers.

It then also switches off the scavenger cells of the immune system.

The body can no longer defend itself adequately.

Chain reaction leads to pneumonia and overreaction of the immune system

The virus usually first attacks the cells of the mucous membrane in the upper respiratory tract. This is where inflammation-promoting substances are released that attract the immune system's phagocytes. Actually, these so-called macrophages are there to fight intruders. But if the course is severe, the coronavirus outsmarts the body's self-protection. Instead, the virus also puts the scavenger cells of the immune system, which are actually rushing to help, into a state of rest.

Not only that: the macrophages themselves now send out inflammatory substances and so-called cytokines.

This creates a chain reaction that amplifies itself.

The inflammatory substances are distributed in the body like an avalanche and thus also reach other regions and organs.

The lungs are usually particularly affected.

“Our studies identify macrophages as crucial cellular messengers for this process,” the researchers explain to

Scinexx

.

Severe course: impaired oxygen exchange in the lungs

With severe corona courses, microthromboses are common and the oxygen exchange with the lungs no longer works properly.

In further analyzes, the researchers found that the cells in the blood vessel walls release substances that promote clumping.

Among other things, this promotes the tissue damage and microthrombosis observed in severe courses.

Many corona patients do not die from the coronavirus alone, rather an overreaction of their own immune system is the reason for the fatal outcome.

Often the condition worsens very abruptly, the excessive inflammatory reactions lead, among other things, to organ failure, massive lung damage and thus to suffocation.

Hope bearers: Researchers are testing these four active ingredients

Soyoung Lee's research group sees senolytics as a beacon of hope in the fight against severe disease. A total of four active ingredients currently seem promising. These are the drugs Navitoclax and Dasatinib, which are already used in cancer therapy. The researchers are also studying fisetin and quercetin. In animal experiments on hamsters and mice, the chain reaction in the body could be contained and the damage to the lungs reduced.

A combination of certain active ingredients turned out to be particularly good: the group of test animals that received dasatinib and quercetin in combination showed, according to researchers, "no signs of disease and little or no weight loss". Findings from clinical studies with quercetin give hope that this active ingredient will also achieve good results in humans. The substance could help prevent the coronavirus from retiring cells.

The researchers themselves are optimistic about the results: "In our eyes, interrupting the inflammatory overreaction early with specific active ingredients has great potential to become a new strategy for the treatment of Covid-19," said the co-author of the study, Clemens Schmitt. Now it remains to be clarified which dose of the active ingredients is ideal, how long the treatment time should be and what side effects the senolytics can have. Further clinical studies are planned for this.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-09-14

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