Possible genetic links to the severity of a CoVid attack.

Very interesting.
Unfortunately I'm not feeling intelligent enough at the moment to absorb and understand the articles that you have linked to.
My husband has recently been increased ill and hospitalised with Covid. We have no idea how / where he caught it as we were shielding.
He must have had a very low viral load.
He has been taking various drugs for RA including biologics. He has been told to stop these until further notice.

Incredibly ill, as opposed to increased ill

I hope your husband will make a good recovery Fanny

Elegran, thank you for highlighting this. I find articles like this very interesting.

The biologic medication I inject for my RA has been found to be beneficial in the treatment of severe cases of Covid in ICU patients. On reading this article, it makes sense to me now.

It's amazing how many people were working on the research and how many hospitals were involved.

Just read your post Fanny. If you need antibiotics, you have to stop the biologics.
There is another poster with RA who is on biologics, who had to stop biologics whilst on antibiotics for a chest infection.
However, I'm on low dose antibiotics for life and can still have the biologics.
Only the experts would be able to explain that one!

Oh thank you Varian
I'm pretty certain now that he will, but when he came out of hospital three weeks ago, I really wasn't sure.
All the HCP s that I have spoken to have agreed that it is a very odd and mysterious virus.
I urge people to be extremely careful.
There is a lot more to it than a ' new and persistent cough'; ' hands, face, space' etc.

I think people are clutching at any information they can find

.There have been 12 deaths of people my family knew since April .All were very different from a fit 34 year old who thought he had a cold and died within hours of his diagnosis to a friends dad who was in a Geriatric ward and hadn't had visitors and my frIends dil whose dad died just as he was about to be released after 3 weeks in a covid ward.
They had nothing in common not age or health or lifestyle or anything other than they lived in the West of Scotland .
I think its a lottery and we have no idea who might get it or how it will affect them.I think all we can do is follow the guidlines and keep safe.Fanny I hope your husband makes a good speedy recovery and that you can get through the stress of it and get back to a good place very soon

Thank you Mary.
I've given up trying to understand any of it now!

Thank you Paddyanne

I have thought (and said) for a long while that genetics could hold a clue to who could be more susceptible to COVID, Elegran so I will read this with interest.

paddyanne you may think it is a lottery and that could prove to be the case but you do not know if they shared a genetic history from generations back.

If people who are shielding get covid then there's no point in anyone shielding is there. It's also strange no one seems to be dying of your normal seasonal flu any more; everyone seems to be cured of that!!!

At my last consultation, my RA consultant actually mentioned the biologic drug I am on and the hope that it may be effective in helping severe Covid cases. I'm all for any kind of research which can help eradicate this virus or help those who catch it.

However, each injection costs about £250 each, so the costs would be prohibitive. How do you fund it? How ill do you have to be, before it is prescribed?

Mine cost nearly £1000 a month and I had to have tried every suitable RA drug , before it was sanctioned. it is not easy to get it!

quizqueen

If people who are shielding get covid then there's no point in anyone shielding is there. It's also strange no one seems to be dying of your normal seasonal flu any more; everyone seems to be cured of that!!!

What nonsense! Of course it is important for the most vulnerable people to shield.

I think people are clutching at any information they can find

It looks as if very many doctors and scientists worldwide have contributed to the research, paddyanne but if you know more, perhaps they would appreciate your input.

Paddyanne, it's absolutely heartbreaking what has happened to your friends and family this year.

However, although you say they had nothing in common, apart from living in the West of Scotland, you cannot possibly know all their medical histories, nor their genetic make up, which may or may not have contributed to their death from Covid..
The more research that is done the better.

paddyanne I am sorry too.
I do wonder about a friend who was in hospital nearly a year ago with symptoms which sound just like COVID, she was due to be sent home the next day but died in the night from something else since identified as a COVID symptom.

*Paddyanne, don't dismiss it as "clutching at any information they can". It is studyng all possible aspects that may have a bearing on the differences in how ill people are with it and genetic differences are something which holds possibilities.

They have taken samples from more than 2,200 seriously ill patients to see what they can find that is

1) common among these patients
2) different from patients who are not as ill

and they have found some markers. Some of those can be explained by what else that gene does, others are so far unexplained, but be assured, their findings are statistically significant enough that others will do more intensive and more extensive research that will come up with something useful.

That is how medical advances work, by a process of narrowing down research.

DH and I became very unwell when we came back from Rome last October. The man sitting beside me on the plane, coughed non stop for the whole flight.
My angiogram, the following week, had to be cancelled because I was on steroids and antibiotics for a severe chest infection.
We have since discovered that Covid cases had already been identified in Italy at that time.
We are now wondering if we actually had Covid.

In November, my friend and neighbour was rushed to hospital with flu, he was put in isolation and only immediate the family were allowed to see him, wearing masks and gowns.
It makes you wonder.

Callistamon
Have you seen the reports coming out of Italy?

They are looking at swabs taken last September 12 month. They are quite certain that the virus was in the country then.

One of the swabs was a four year old Milanese boy, who had never been out of the city.

petra I hadn't, but I am not surprised.
I was ill over last Christmas and for weeks afterwards.

I did see the report, which was not widely publicised, about the British man who was ill and died at the end of January from pneumonia but his lung tissue has since been tested and found to contain COVID.

paddyanne

I think people are clutching at any information they can find

.There have been 12 deaths of people my family knew since April .All were very different from a fit 34 year old who thought he had a cold and died within hours of his diagnosis to a friends dad who was in a Geriatric ward and hadn't had visitors and my frIends dil whose dad died just as he was about to be released after 3 weeks in a covid ward.
They had nothing in common not age or health or lifestyle or anything other than they lived in the West of Scotland .
I think its a lottery and we have no idea who might get it or how it will affect them.I think all we can do is follow the guidlines and keep safe.Fanny I hope your husband makes a good speedy recovery and that you can get through the stress of it and get back to a good place very soon

You may well think it is a lottery but the latest research is designed to investigate more stringently what may seem “a lottery” to the layman.
I don’t think the scientists are clutching at straws and the research they are doing will inform both treatment and immunisation in future. The finer differences in our DNA is not something we are privy to outside the laboratory so let’s not be dismissive just because we do not have the knowledge, training or medical experience to come up with an answer.
If we did - we wouldn’t need the scientists!

I am sure some people are dying of flu and indeed other illnesses, but as we now know, if they had tested positive for covid in the previous 28 days then that is what is put on the death certificate.

Who knows how many people have died with covid and not from it ?

I think many of us who were ill last winter assumed it was a type of flu we were suffering. DH was eventually prescribed steroids, my symptoms were laboured breathing, something I have never suffered with a flu. Once the symptoms of Covid were clearer, many of us began to wonder if we had been ill with this particular virus and not flu.

Scientists have discovered so many cures throughout history Paddyann. As Covid-19 is an unknown strain there is so much for scientists to discover as to the make up of this new virus including its effect on varying genetics, being one example.