How Mitochondria Protects Us From Covid-19

I am a physician who has a clinical research orientation, with Boards in Psychiatry and Neurology, and also in Addiction Medicine. I was involved in the original studies of weightlessness for NASA's Man Orbiting Laboratory when I was at the School of Aerospace Medicine. I became active in writing a series of posts about COVID-19 on my column, The Truisms of Wellness, when the virus closed down a voluntary 35-bed unit for patients 55 years and older, at Lehigh Regional Hospital. I was its Medical Director.

Like many physicians and scientists, I was trying to understand the interrelationships of its numerous symptoms, clinical risk factors, and lethality. I concluded that all of the clinical risk factors (age, obesity, hypertension, and other conditions.) shared one thing in common (which I wrote about in the third installment), impaired mitochondrial respiration, or a decrease in its ability to produce ATP. This is our body's and its cells’ main and most efficient energy source. I then discovered and described how the virus localizes to the mitochondria which it attacks and disrupts, thereby taking energy away from the cells’ battle with the virus (like a gun without bullets) including autophagy or the "Romba" recycling process necessary to maintain life. In this process, the DNA of the "wounded" or degraded mitochondria, which is uniquely different from our regular cellular DNA, is released into the blood.

What I suggested in the third installment (mitochondria protect us from COVID-19, even death) was not only the central role of mitochondria in the disease process but in subsequent posts possible ways to protect our mitochondria and our lives from the illness. This could open a whole new way of conceptualizing prevention.

My conclusions have been affirmed by a medical research announcement from the Washington University School of Medicine on January 17, 2021. "Rapid blood test identifies COVID-19 patients at high risk of severe disease. Measuring mitochondrial DNA could predict who will need ICU care, intubation.”

One of the most difficult problems is predicting which hospitalized patient will develop life-threatening illness necessitating various types of intensive care. A simple blood test that measures mitochondrial DNA, which is usually inside the mitochondria, spills out into the blood even in seemingly younger healthier patients and others, reflecting severe complications that can lead to death.

Yes, if you don't have the functioning mitochondria to produce ATP, our electricity, you have no light or life. This research study was published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight, involving around 100 patients.