XPost: misc.news.internet.discuss   
   From: here@is.invalid   
      
   An Explanation for Some Covid-19 Deaths May Not Be Holding Up   
      
   Recent studies have created doubts about an agent in cytokine storms,   
   and suggest that treatments for it may not help.   
      
   Medical researchers are raising significant doubts about whether an   
   agent of the human immune system causes some coronavirus patients to   
   end up in the hospital with injured lungs and other organs, struggling   
   to breathe. What remains is a continuing mystery about what causes   
   certain people to die from Covid-19, and how best to prevent that.   
      
   A hypothesis that emerged early in the pandemic involves cytokine   
   storms, an immune system response that is often invoked to explain   
   severe viral infections, and to many doctors it seemed to make perfect   
   sense: Patients who died from Covid were found to sometimes have   
   little or no virus in their bodies. Their immune systems got rid of   
   it. But in doing so, the hypothesis went, their body's defenses went   
   rogue, spewing out powerful compounds -- cytokines and other drivers   
   of inflammation -- that fatally damaged tissues and organs in a storm.   
      
   But in a number of recent studies, some researchers say, an agent   
   suspected of causing the storms might not be the culprit or that such   
   storms might not happen in the way doctors believed.   
      
   Not everyone agrees.   
      
   Dr. Randy Cron, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the   
   University of Alabama at Birmingham who has long studied cytokine   
   storms, says some hospitalized Covid-19 patients do experience these   
   immune overreactions. But he agrees they are not identical to the   
   reactions seen in other disorders, and much remains to be learned.   
      
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)