BU biomedical engineers crack relationship between silent hypoxia and coronavirus

Silent hypoxia is a condition when oxygen levels in the body are abnormally low, which can cause major damage to the vital organs of the body if gone undetected for a long period of time. Despite experiencing dangerously low levels of oxygen, many people infected with severe cases of COVID-19 sometimes show no symptoms of shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. Hypoxia's ability to quietly inflict damage is why it's been coined "silent."

The results of the research, attained after a deep study with the help of a computer model, has been published in Nature Communications which unveils the study by the lead author of the new study Jacob Herrmann. It states, "Silent hypoxia is likely caused by a combination of biological mechanisms that may occur simultaneously in the lungs of COVID-19 patients."

According to Herrmann, "Preliminary clinical data have suggested that the lungs of some COVID-19 patients had lost the ability to restrict blood flow to already damaged tissue, and in contrast, were potentially opening up those blood vessels even more, which is hard to measure on a CT scan."

According to the report provided by Science Daily, a number of interventions are currently being studied to have a more informed study about the combinations varying from patient to patient. One of them is a low-tech intervention called prone positioning that flips patients over onto their stomachs, allowing for the back part of the lungs to pull in more oxygen and evening out the mismatched air-to-blood ratio.