In a study from UZ Leuven and KU Leuven, scientists found more than 15% of all critically ill patients who end up in intensive care with severe influenza or COVID-19 additionally develop aspergillosis, a pulmonary fungal infection.
This doubles their mortality rate.
They found that multiple dysfunctions of the immune response lie at the basis of higher susceptibility to fungal infections.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide end up in intensive care with influenza or COVID-19. About 15% of them develop an additional lung infection with the common fungus Aspergillus (aspergillosis).
In healthy people, this infection hardly ever leads to illness. For critically ill patients with underlying influenza or COVID-19 infection, however, aspergillosis can be deadly:
The fungus can start to grow in the tissue of their respiratory tract and lungs and cause irreversible damage.
The mortality rate of these patients becomes 40%–50%, about twice as high as that of ICU patients who only have severe influenza or COVID-19.
In the study, the team examined lung samples of 169 patients with influenza or COVID-19, with or without aspergillosis.
They discovered that, in patients with serious influenza or COVID-19 who develop this type of fungal infection, the innate immune system had been affected in various areas.
Their immune cells, which in healthy people are responsible for eliminating fungal spores in the lungs, were compromised.
Furthermore, the white blood cells that would normally clean up fungal hyphae did not seem to function properly in those influenza or COVID-19 patients.
It was surprising to see that partly similar deviating immune processes come into play in both COVID-19 and influenza.
The team says with this information, they can develop biomarkers that help to predict which patients are more susceptible to a fungal infection and therefore need close follow-up.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about a universal antibody therapy for all COVID-19 variants, and scientists find persistent immune inflammation after mild COVID-19.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about how COVID-19 triggers immune response in brain, and results showing new air filters could rapidly kill COVID-19 and other viruses.
The study was conducted by Prof. Joost Wauters et al and published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
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