Professor Bruce Hammock UC DAVIS and other team published a research paper on 1 April 21 pinpoints what could be “the missing link” in why some COVID patients recover and some don’t……

  • The UC Davis scientists used clinical data collected from 6 patients with laboratory -confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and admitted to the UC Davis Medical Center, and 44 healthy samples carefully chosen from the healthy control control arm of a recently completed clinical study.
  • As per research, A blood plasma biomarker discovered in hospitalized COVID patients may not only predict the severity of adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) but further research may lead to inhibiting the progression.
  • Instead of immune response and cytokine profile as important drivers in severity, research found that  lipid mediators may be the missing link to answering questions such as why some people are asymptomatic while others die, or why some disease resolves quickly while others suffer from long-haul COVID or why some disease resolves quickly while others suffer from long-haul COVID.
  • The compounds, known as leukotoxins and leukotoxin diols, originate from linoleic acid, the body’s most abundant dietary fat. The leukotoxins (also called EpOMEs) are converted to the leukotoxin diols (also called DiHOMES) by the soluble epoxide hydrolase on which UC DAVIS team worked on.

Hence, leukotoxin diols in the blood of COVID-19 patients could act as a biomarker for lung distress.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.663869/full