Experts for use of immune modulators to treat patients

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 26

Covid has a special affinity for blood vessels and that’s why after reaching lungs, it starts invading into the small blood vessels present in the walls of alveoli (tiny air sacs in lungs that take up the oxygen one breathes in) and from there, it spreads to the entire body, says a review paper by a group of researchers at the PGI.

The lead authors of the paper are Dr Suruchi Garg, a city-based dermatologist, and Dr Mandeep Garg of the PGI. Dr Nidhi, Dr Pankaj Malhotra and Dr Ritesh Agarwal of the PGI are the co-authors.

The researchers reviewed the mechanism of how Covid affects not just lungs, but also other multiple organ system of the human body.

According to the paper, immune modulators such as vitamin C, D and zinc help a Covid patient in the first week of illness and blood thinners are required to be given from the second week while the body is trying to fight the virus through various mechanisms.

The research paper said, “If the immunity of the person is low, the virus starts multiplying, more so in people with underlying co-morbidities. It invades into the capillaries of lung alveoli and creates multiple injuries leading to microthrombi (blood clots) formation. And

then these virus-laden microthrombi get dislodged and start circulating in the blood and affect various other organs.”

He said, “When this happens, the body’s second line of defence comes into play against the viral antigens by secreting antibodies, which try to eradicate the virus by the formation of antigen-antibody complex. This results in the excessive release of cytokines by various immune cells of the body and produce cytokine storm.”

Dr Mandeep Garg from the Department of Radiodiagnosis and Imaging, PGI, explains, “Once blood vessels of vital organs such as heart, lungs, brain and liver get occluded due to these two mechanisms, end organ damage starts happening in various systems leading to high fatality.” According to the review paper, the treatment for Covid-19 should be aimed on the basis of disease pathogenesis.