Servolab Science News N°1: A Dangerous Interconnection

ABSTRACT

The World Health Organization (WHO) named the disease caused by a virus from the coronavirus family COVID-19, which has become the largest pandemic that humanity has experienced in the 21st century, given its spread across all continents and its health, economic and social implications in all countries. Clinical and laboratory data point to the strong involvement of iron and the body's oxidative state in the progression of the disease.

Iron and oxygen are interconnected in living organisms in a delicate relationship in which reactive species are generated that the cell takes advantage of for cell signaling processes and for the expression of life-sustaining genes. A balance maintained by a robust biochemical antioxidant machinery. Viruses also need iron to replicate efficiently, as they depend on the cell to continue to exist because viral replication is associated with the potentiation of cellular metabolism for the construction of the viral genome and its proteins. Viral infections maintain their replication cycle by promoting a prooxidant environment in the host cell, and SARS-Cov2 appears to be extremely efficient in propitiating this oxidative environment, as demonstrated by laboratory findings in infected patients. In this review, we discuss findings implicating oxidative stress and its intimate relationship with iron metabolism as two key factors in Covid-19 severity.

Key words: Covid-19, iron, oxidative stress, glutathione, total thiols, total antioxidant capacity.