Covid-19 attacks the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to inhibit human heme metabolism

https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173

by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 • 6 years ago

45 14 6 years ago

chemrxiv.org

dannykwells• 6 years ago

Inflammatory title not supported by the document. Please fix.

rini17• 6 years ago

Probably too long. I propose: "COVID-19 Attacks the Hemoglobin to Inhibit Human Meme Metabolism"

dang2• 6 years ago

The memes are doing fine ;)

M5x7wI3CmbEem102• 6 years ago

sorry, I just wanted to get the information out there. what would you like me to change it to?

dang2• 6 years ago

We've edited it now. Thanks!

g3e0• 6 years ago

There was a post about this doing the rounds yesterday. Annoyingly it was posted on Medium and has since been removed, but a copy of it, along with some interesting discussion, can be found here: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/04/05/wuhan-f...

The hypothesis is that the virus is somehow attacking the hemoglobin, stopping it from being able to carry oxygen AND releasing a toxic form of iron, both of which eventually cause organ failure.

I am not a doctor, but if this hypothesis is true, it could explain why the death rate for those who end up on a ventilator is so high. If your immune system doesn’t fight the infection off fast enough, eventually your blood becomes incapable of carrying oxygen. At this point, a ventilator won’t help you, you would need a blood transfusion containing healthy hemoglobin.

The tone of the post was that we are currently fighting the wrong disease - treating Covid-19 like we would treat pneumonia, when it is actually something unique.

withinboredom• 6 years ago

After seeing it develop in my wife, and later myself, I can confirm that it “appears like malaria” in that in comes in waves (much like a blood disease like malaria). There could be some truth to this, but it could also be personal bias seeing a pattern that isn’t there.

morebytes• 6 years ago

I too read that blog post and the supposed science that the author purports, which caused me to search for some scientific explanations and found this article by two Chinese Scientists: https://bit.ly/2VaR39G

twic2• 6 years ago

In this study, conserved domain analysis, homology modeling, and molecular docking were used

In other words, they haven't actually done any experiments.

The results showed the ORF8 and surface glycoprotein could bind to the porphyrin, respectively. At the same time, orf1ab, ORF10, and ORF3a proteins could coordinate attack the heme on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to dissociate the iron to form the porphyrin.

Haemoglobin is inside red blood cells. If you think these interactions are happening, you need to explain how you think the viral proteins are getting inside red blood cells in sufficient quantity to significantly screw up the haemoglobin.

I don't think red blood cells even express ACE2, the receptor the virus uses to enter cells.

If viruses did somehow manage to enter red blood cells, they would find that there is no transcription and translation machinery (red blood cells aren't really cells, psych!), and so they won't be able to make more of their proteins - the only things doing any interacting will be the scant handful of proteins that the virus particles brought with them.

Even then, the paper is really unclear on the details, but i get the impression that it is the extracellular domains of the envelope protein and surface glycoprotein that are being modelled. When a virus enters a cell, it does it by fusing its envelope with the membrane of the host cell, which leaves the extracellular domains of the viral membrane proteins on the outside of the host cell. Which is not where the haemoglobin is.

I think this paper is absolute nonsense from top to bottom. What am i missing?

M5x7wI3CmbEem102• 6 years ago

here is a phenomenal twitter thread that outlines the implications of this study:

https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1244717172871409666

zalkota• 6 years ago

This NYC doctor gives an alarmingly accurate firsthand description that corresponds with this study. https://youtu.be/KLXY_yqBgDE

Hnrobert42• 6 years ago

That thread lays out the implications if the paper is correct. It does not address the correctness concerns laid out my the parent post.

twic2• 6 years ago

No, it's a terrible twitter thread that doesn't critically evaluate the work at all.

At least one person sees the same problem with the paper that i do:

https://twitter.com/__ice9/status/1245400895581552652

Covid-19 attacks the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to inhibit human heme metabolism

Related Stories