3 ms·
Your first paragraph is a wild guess. There’s no reason having parasites should make Covid-19 more severe, and many human parasites do not even multiply inside
by alecst 5y ago
Your first paragraph is a wild guess. There’s no reason having parasites should make Covid-19 more severe, and many human parasites do not even multiply inside the body during their life cycle.
In fact there’s even a paper floating around showing an anti-correlation between helminth infection and Covid-19 severity.
My point being: the “obvious” mechanism of action may not be as obvious as you think.
- xadhominemx 5y ago> There’s no reason having parasites should make Covid-19 more severe That is simply not true. Parasites do have an impact on the immune system and can amplify or reduce response to other pathogens. This is a very well known effect and an important area of study due to the prevalence of parasitic infections in tropical regions.
- alecst 5y agoYea you're exactly right, and I think you've taken a stronger interpretation from that quoted part than what I intended. My point was that it's too early to jump to conclusions about parasites making Covid-19 more severe. But I do think that, if anything, the data points gently to the opposite conclusion. > Recent studies have shown that helminth endemic countries showed fewer cases and deaths so far and helminth co-infection might reduce the severity of COVID-19. from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/iid3.573 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/iid3.573. Others: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34861106/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34861106/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7430705/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7430705/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33073203/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33073203/