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Scientists have found similarities in COVID-19 with high-altitude syndrome

The picture of lung lesions in patients with severe COVID-19 is similar to the manifestation of altitude sickness, so treatment should not correct respiratory failure, but oxygen deficiency, noted Cameron Kyle-Siddel, an intensive care unit doctor in New York. He is quoted by the publication of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences “First-hand Science”.

In most patients with coronavirus infection, the level of hemoglobin, a protein that carries oxygen and provides gas exchange in the lungs, drops in the blood, the publication says. At the same time, the level of heme, the non-protein part of hemoglobin, consisting of a complex of porphyrin with iron, a protein of ferritin that binds free iron ions, and biochemical markers of inflammation increase in the blood. According to scientists, this means that the body is actively destroying hemoglobin, causing an inflammatory process.

A computer model created by Chinese scientists shows that hemoglobin can be attacked not by the virus particles themselves, but by the viral proteins. Some of them bind porphyrin, while others displace iron from the heme, interacting with protein beta chains of hemoglobin. Lung cells respond to changes in gas exchange by increasing inflammation, and the effect is “frosted glass”, which is noticeable on computer tomograms of the lungs of patients, the publication says.

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