BALTIMORE, April 16 (WNM/Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security) - There is growing evidence that COVID-19 can have serious effects on organs far beyond the lungs (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-destroys-lungs-but-doctors-are-finding-its-damage-in-kidneys-hearts-and-elsewhere/2020/04/14/7ff71ee0-7db1-11ea-a3ee-13e1ae0a3571_story.html).

Respiratory distress and failure is perhaps the most recognized clinical presentation in severe COVID-19 patients, but patients are also experiencing damage to the heart, kidneys, central nervous system, and other parts of the body. In particular, kidney failure (https://www.kidney-international.org/article/S0085-2538(20)30369-0/fulltext) among COVID-19 patients resulting in increased demand for dialysis and continuous renal replacement therapy.

This could be due to a variety of factors, including the treatments used to care for COVID-19 patients or a “cytokine storm” (i.e., overwhelming immune response that can also damage organs and tissues), but there is also preliminary evidence that the damage could be caused by the disease itself.

Additional data and research are needed to fully characterize the clinical progression and manifestation of COVID-19, but it appears that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect a variety of cells and result in a broad scope of symptoms and damage.