Covid-19-Associated Pulmonary Aspergillosis: The Other Side of the Coin.
Costantini. Claudio C; van de Veerdonk. Frank L FL; Romani. Luigina L
Key Findings
- COVID‑19 can cause a dysregulated immune response that predisposes to secondary fungal infections like CAPA
- CAPA is emerging as a notable cause of illness and death in COVID‑19 patients
- Restoring immune balance could potentially reduce the risk of CAPA, but specific strategies are not detailed
Practical Outcomes
- For now, the main takeaway is to be aware of fungal infection risk in severe COVID‑19 and consider overall immune health. There’s no direct protocol for thymosin‑alpha‑1, so biohackers should wait for concrete studies before adding it for this purpose.
Summary
The paper explains that COVID‑19 can mess up the immune system, making people more likely to get a dangerous lung fungus called aspergillosis. It says fixing the immune imbalance might lower that risk, but it doesn’t give any concrete steps or data on using thymosin‑alpha‑1.
Abstract
The immune response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a critical factor in the clinical presentation of COVID-19, which may range from asymptomatic to a fatal, multi-organ disease. A dysregulated immune response not only compromises the ability of the host to resolve the viral infection, but may also predispose the individual to secondary bacterial and fungal infections, a risk to which the current therapeutic immunomodulatory approaches significantly contribute. Among the secondary infections that may occur in COVID-19 patients, coronavirus-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA) is emerging as a potential cause of morbidity and mortality, although many aspects of the disease still remain unresolved. With this opinion, we present the current view of CAPA and discuss how the same mechanisms that underlie the dysregulated immune response in COVID-19 increase susceptibility to <i>Aspergillus</i> infection. Likewise, resorting to endogenous pathways of immunomodulation may not only restore immune homeostasis in COVID-19 patients, but also reduce the risk for aspergillosis. Therefore, CAPA represents the other side of the coin in COVID-19 and our advances in the understanding and treatment of the immune response in COVID-19 should represent the framework for the study of CAPA.
Study Information
pubmed
2020
2020-12-01T00:00:00.000Z
10.3390/vaccines8040713
32
78