Stem Cell Therapy for COVID

COVID is a disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It causes respiratory symptoms and a wide range of sequelae mainly affecting the lungs.

What is it?

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. 

Most people infected with the virus will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without requiring special treatment.

The disease is transmitted through close person-to-person contact, primarily through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, exercises, or talks. The incubation period (i.e., the time from exposure to onset of symptoms) varies from 2 to 14 days.

Signs & Symptoms

SARS-CoV-2 infection causes a spectrum of disease severity, from asymptomatic illness to acute asymptomatic respiratory failure and death.

Symptoms include:

  • Fever
  • Cough
  • Odynophagia
  • Nasal congestion or discharge
  • Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing (dyspnea)
  • Repeated shivering or shaking with chills
  • New loss of smell or taste
  • Tiredness
  • Muscle pain
  • Headache
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Diarrhea
  •  

diagnosis

There are different tests that can be performed to confirm an infection by the virus after a clinical analysis that produces suspicion of the disease, such as:

Real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) or other nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT) of lower respiratory secretions and serum.

Lower respiratory secretion antigen test

Complications

Risk factors for severe disease include advanced age, immunocompromise, comorbidities (e.g., diabetes, chronic kidney disease), and pregnancy.

Severe disease is characterized by dyspnea, hypoxia and extensive pulmonary involvement on imaging. This picture may progress to respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation, shock, multiorgan failure, and death. 

Stem Cells

MSC infusion improved clinical symptoms, such as weakness and fatigue, respiratory distress and low oxygen saturation.

Intravenously administered MSCs can lodge in the lungs and inhibit both lung inflammation and fibrosis following acute lung injury by covid-19, and may also serve as a therapeutic option to regulate the overactivated inflammatory response.