It has infected 4 million people around the globe, killing more than 280,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. In the United States, 1.3 million have been infected and more than 78,000 have died.
“This is a virus that literally did not exist in humans six months ago,” said Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who works in cardiovascular medicine. “We had to rapidly learn how this virus impacts the human body and identify ways to treat it literally in a time-scale of weeks. With many other diseases, we have had decades.”
Research and therapies are focused on these phenomena. Blood thinners are being more widely used in some hospitals Then they noticed damage to the waste-filtering kidney cells of patients even before they needed intensive care. And studies out of Wuhan found the pathogen in the kidneys themselves, leading to speculation the virus is harming the organ.
Once inside a cell, the virus replicates, causing chaos. ACE2 receptors, which help regulate blood pressure, are plentiful in the lungs, kidneys and intestines — organs hit hard by the pathogen in many patients. That also may be why high blood pressure has emerged as one of the most common preexisting conditions in people who become severely ill with covid-19.