Why Does COVID-19 Cause Severe Illness in Some Patients but Not Others?
Factors linked to disease outcomes included viral load, frequencies of certain cell types such as #cytotoxic #natural #killer (#NK) cells, various #inflammatory #states, and markers of #myocardial #damage.
In participants who died of the infection, #viral #loads persisted and even started to rise over time. By contrast, viral loads steadily declined in those with milder infections.
The activation of cell types such as cytotoxic NK cells increased in the milder cases as participants’ immune systems ramped up in response to the infection, while these cells decreased in the more severe groups.
Furthermore, participants who were sickest had higher levels of inflammatory markers upon hospitalization that increased over time, while patients in the milder groups showed an opposite pattern
< Yale School of Medicine
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/why-does-covid-19-cause-severe-illness-in-some-patients-but-not-others/