Can enjoying your blood sugar level help fight COVID-19?
Sugar is not only something that sweetens our food. It is likewise something that is an important part of the proteins that make up our bodies.
That led me to believe, as I wrote in the Journal of Medical Virology, that manage of blood glucose by diet and exercise, in addition to better control of blood sugar in diabetics, especially when ill with COVID-19, may perhaps assist manage the intensity of the illness and even its spread.
I have worked in the field of breast cancer for several years, and my associates and I have been trying to use a drug called hydroxychloroquine in medical trials. The goal: decrease the number of breast cancer cells in the bone marrow and avoid their re-emergence several years later on to trigger reoccurrence– what’s called growth dormancy.
You probably have actually heard a lot about the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine in recent months as it has actually been suggested as a treatment for COVID-19 No definitive evidence to date shows that hydroxychloroquine is effective. It turns out, hydroxychloroquine might be able tolower blood sugar like metformin.
Colleagues of mine have shared that numerous of their COVID-19 clients not only had diabetes but some were undiagnosed diabetics.
Understanding the drug’s capacity to lower blood glucose, paired with reports of high blood glucose in COVID-19 clients, led me to put both together to try to explain some features of COVID-19 and how blood sugar level may connect with the virus.
Blood sugar and how the infection gets in cells
The brand-new coronavirus contaminates cells by attaching to the surface area through a receptor called the angiotensin transforming enzyme 2, or ACE2. Both the ACE2 and the infection requirement sugar molecules bound to their protein for this to work effectively.
My idea, which I have actually explained in a peer-reviewed post in the Journal of Medical Virology, is that COVID-19 infection and its intensity is influenced by the concentration of sugar-coated virus and the concentration of sugar-coated ACE2 receptors in the lung tissues. The degree and control of the lungs’ immune response may also depend on just how much sugar is attached to infection’s spike protein roughly 8 to 10 days after signs begin, which might differ depending upon your age and sex
Researchers already understand that people with diabetes are more susceptible to COVID-19 What is unusual is that when I talked to physicians around the nation taking care of COVID-19 clients, they told me that a lot of their clients in the hospital not just had diabetes and prediabetes but others had high blood sugar, without being mindful of it.
People with SARS – which is associated to the brand-new coronavirus– appear to get high blood sugar temporarily when they get infected.
This makes sense because there are a lot of ACE2 receptors on the so-called islet cells of the pancreas. These are the cells that make insulin– which is vital for controlling blood sugar level. If the infection infects these cells, then they stop making insulin and you can get a short-lived diabetes with COVID-19
High blood sugar increases the number of sugar-coated ACE2 receptors in the lungs of diabetic mice. When there is more insulin, or through diet plan or workout, there is less sugar, so there are fewer ACE2 receptors and less sugar on each one, and this may lower the amount of virus getting into the cell.
That recommends that a high blood glucose test called hemoglobin A1c– which can be utilized even in those without diabetes or prediabetes– might be used as a marker for patients at risk for COVID-19 illness. 3.8%of the U.S. population has a high A1c.
How is hydroxychlorquine involved?
Hydroxychloroquine might work by blocking processes in the cell that include sugars to proteins. This the reverse of what high blood sugar appears to do.
It is uncertain whether hydroxychloroquine will work for everybody, or perhaps in a small group of patients. While the medical neighborhood waits for medical trials to tell us at last if hydroxychloroquine operates in COVID-19, the intriguing thing to me is that this debate may have brought us a possible hypothesis regarding why high blood glucose may make the illness even worse, and possibly what to do about it.
A lot of brand-new drugs and theories are emerging about COVID-19 and the science is advancing rapidly.
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