Brief Report - Asian Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences (2022) Volume 12, Issue 91
Increase in levels of Serum Ferritin in COVID 19.
Corona virus is a type of virus that commonly cause infection to your upper respiratory tract (sinuses, nose, and throat) and also radiates to lower respiratory tract and infects it. Most of these viruses are not life threatening. Recently in the past year, 2020 there was an outbreak initiated in December 2019 in China after which the WHO (World Health Organization) identified SARS-CoV-2 as a variant of new Corona virus. This outbreak soon spread all around the globe affecting many people. The disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2 is Covid-19 that cause infection in the respiratory tract hence you can call the infection as respiratory tract infection. It affects both the upper and lower respiratory tract which includes sinuses, nose, throat, lungs and windpipe. The epidemiology of this virus type is same as the other variants of corona viruses. They are communicable in nature. They spread more commonly through person to person by aerosols. The damage caused to the person ranges from mild to severe even life threatening (deadly). Ferritin is known as intracellular iron storage. Elevated forms of this iron storage indicate the presence of any type of virus or bacteria in the human body. Thus, the temporary presence of COVID-19 can also be detected by measuring the level of ferritin. It has been observed in research that high ferritin levels in serum indicate the severity of COVID-19 as 50 percent of cases of patients with COVID-19having extremely high ferritin levels have died. Research on ferritin is ongoing. Recent studies have also proved that it can also activate the body's macrophages which are like the white blood cells of the immune system, in addition to indicating acuteness of illness.
Author(s): Shriram Kane*