Fighting COVID-19 With a Calm Immune System
COVID-19 can cause a wide range of symptoms in people, which in turn can cause a number of serious and even life-threatening conditions. One of these conditions is called a cytokine storm, which is when a person’s own immune system begins to attack healthy cells and tissue instead of the virus.
researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine discovered that macrophages (immune cells) that lack a certain protein called GIV will go into overdrive and immediately react to even the smallest amount of bacteria. To help prevent this, they created peptides that mimic GIV, allowing them to shut down macrophages on command. When test on mice, the GIV-mimic peptide notably tempered the mice’s inflammatory response. For more information on how this process works, and the relation to the body’s TLR4 molecules, I recommend reading the article on the discovery here, or the original study (which costs $10) here.
The team behind this discovery recently was awarded a $5 million grant to further investigate the connection between GIV and Macrophages. Further discoveries in this area could lead to treatments for many different diseases well beyond that of COVID-19.
Reader Feedback
I’d love to hear from you on what topics you would like me to cover in future posts. On slow news days (like today) I like to cover different studies that relate to COVID-19, but if there are specific topics you would like me to cover I am happy to dig into them as well!
That’s all for now, stay safe everyone!
BC COVID-19 Info 