Researchers are just beginning to understand the potential for COVID-19 to inflict damage to different parts of the body – not just the lungs.
Many recent news articles have highlighted these impacts to the heart, on clotting, on toes, etc.
This article from Science Magazine summarizes the damage COVID-19 can inflict by organ system (heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain ) and discusses how this damage is thought to occur. Although much of what we know remains anecdotal or from small case studies, formal research studies have begun to better characterize the health consequences of COVID-19 on a population level.
“Does a dangerous, newly observed tendency to blood clotting transform some mild cases into life-threatening emergencies? Is an overzealous immune response behind the worst cases, suggesting treatment with immune-suppressing drugs could help? What explains the startlingly low blood oxygen that some physicians are reporting in patients who nonetheless are not gasping for breath? “Taking a systems approach may be beneficial as we start thinking about therapies,” says Nilam Mangalmurti, a pulmonary intensivist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP).”
