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The main route of infection for the new corona virus is drip infection. This means that you become infected when someone coughs or sneezes, or has a virus on your fingers and then pills in your nose or eyes.
– First, viruses end up in the oral cavity and behind the nose, which are the big factories of new virus particles. This is where the intensive propagation takes place initially.
This is stated by Anders Sönnerborg, professor of virology and researcher on the treatment of covid-19 at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge.
The first symptoms will come when the virus particles have become large enough for the immune system to counterattack. It can be fever and sore throat with flu-like symptoms.
Then it usually calms down before the next phase comes, with symptoms from the lungs. Therefore, covid-19 is generally said to have a two-phase process.
They think they are on the road to improvement, but then they return to problems quickly with shortness of breath and a returning cough.
– Some do not get worse but recover. While others believe that the danger has passed, a second forest comes ten days later and suddenly worsens.
– They think they are on the way to getting better, but then they will have problems again very quickly with shortness of breath and a returning cough. The fever also increases again. So it’s complicated.
How much time will it take From the first growth of the pharynx until the virus infiltrates the lungs, he is not sure.
– But it probably occurs immediately or within a day or two after infection.
In the second phase, therefore, the symptoms mainly come from the lungs. Anders Sönnerborg estimates that about 20 percent of covid-19 hospital care also suffers from severe lung symptoms.
The infection has reached the bottom of the lungs and enters the small lungs, the alveoli.
Some people affected get pneumonia from the new corona virus and may need help from a respirator to breathe.
What happens is that virus it adheres to the surface of the lungs of millions of epithelial cells that are there as a barrier between the trachea and the underlying tissue and capillaries.
Corona virus binds to a specific receptor on the surface of epithelial cells. The virus then spits out its inheritance in the cell along with some enzymes that the virus needs to proliferate.
It causes new virus particles to be produced inside the cell until it is so infected that it explodes like a balloon.
New viruses come out and multiply by repeating the same procedure on even more cells that are found in the same way.
The number of infected cells is growing. Fast and uncontrolled. Suddenly, millions of cells become infected and billions of viruses multiply in the lungs.
In the worst case, the virus can permanently damage lung bladder cells and cause lifelong functional decline in the lungs.
Oxygen deficiency can also cause damage to other organs such as the heart, kidneys, and liver.
– It is not yet known how big is the risk of problems that arise in the long term because covid-19 is a new infection. But there are studies that have not yet been published and scientifically approved, says Anders Sönnerborg.
The symptoms, both in phase one and in the second, come from the reaction of the immune system.
“It almost always happens that it is the immune system that gives the most symptoms, both in the acute phase when the virus is in the throat and in the other phase when the lungs drop,” explains Anders Sönnerborg.
Anders Sönnerborg is a professor of virology and a researcher on the treatment of covid-19 disease at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge.
Photo: Fredrik Funck
Then comes another bomb that the virus can cause in the worst case in the body, that is, the uncontrolled response of the immune response itself.
That is, it can overreact and send off amounts of cytokines that require amounts of battle-sucked immune cells whose job it is to try to destroy as many enemies as possible. The problem is that they cause inflammation and also kill the body’s own cells.
It’s the way the body asks for help, but in the worst case, it causes inflammation in the lungs and more injury.
Why the immune system in this way goes crazy in some people I don’t know. But it may have genetic causes, according to Anders Sönnerborg.
– It is an important question for which we still do not know the answer. But clarifying why it is tracked is a problem for research, not only in covid-19, but in other conditions as well. The same was seen in the predecessor of this virus, which was sars-cov1 in 2003.
Are there any hypotheses?
– Yes, there are some diseases when this condition can occur, where the genetic regulation of the immune system may not be as it should be. The virus triggers this for some unclear reason.
Another theory is that people who are exposed to a large number of virus particles are more affected. This may be one reason why previously healthy healthcare professionals have become so ill.
– If you receive a stronger stimulus, it is reasonable to believe that the immune system reacts more strongly, says Petter Brodin, a doctor at the Karolinska Institute and researching the immune system.
The vast majority of those who Infected with the novel coronavirus it copes with mild symptoms and heals without lasting but.
The immune system manages to cleanse the battlefield by killing infected cells and preventing virus particles from infecting new ones.
– Among those who handle this well, it is a strong over-representation of young people, although we have seen that some may also be seriously ill.
At this time it is not known why some young people become seriously ill. But there are hypotheses here too, although Anders Sönnerborg doesn’t think any of them are really good.
– But, as mentioned, there are discussions that those who are seriously ill could have certain immune defects. There are also hypotheses that they have impaired lung capacity, for example due to smoking.
