Thread by @DrEricDing

⚠️OBESITY & #COVID—Now researchers demonstrate #SARSCoV2 infects both fat cells & certain immune cells within body fat, prompting a damaging defensive response. “Bottomline is—‘Oh my god, indeed, the virus can infect fat cells directly,’” ~Dr. Philipp Scherer. Bad news America 🧵

2) “Whatever happens in fat doesn’t stay in fat,” he added. “It affects the neighboring tissues as well.”

nytimes.com/2021/12/08/hea…

3) If the findings hold up, they may shed light not just on why patients with excess pounds are vulnerable to the virus, but also on why certain younger adults with no other risks become so ill.

4) “Maybe that’s the Achilles’ heel that the virus utilizes to evade our protective immune responses — by hiding in this place (fat cells),” Dr. Vishwa Deep Dixit, a professor of comparative medicine and immunology at Yale School of Medicine, said.

5) “The finding is particularly relevant to the United States, which has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world. Most American adults are overweight, and 42 percent have obesity.”

nytimes.com/2021/12/08/hea…

6) Black, Hispanic, Native American and Alaska Native people in the U.S. have higher obesity rates than white adults and Asian Americans; they have also been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with death rates roughly double those of white Americans.

7) ““This could well be contributing to severe disease,” Dr. Catherine Blish, a professor at Stanford University Medical Center and one of the report’s two senior authors, said. nytimes.com/2021/12/08/hea…

8) ““We’re seeing the same inflammatory cytokines that I see in the blood of the really sick patients being produced in response to infection of those tissues.”

nytimes.com/2021/12/08/hea…

9) Body fat used to be thought of as inert, a form of storage. But scientists now know that the tissue is biologically active, producing hormones & immune-system proteins that act on other cells, promoting a state of nagging low-grade inflammation even when there is no infection.