OREANDA-NEWS. The main cause of severe cases of coronavirus infection that lead to death is a high concentration of coronavirus in the lungs. This is the conclusion reached by American scientists. The results of their research are published in the journal Nature.

Specialists collected lung tissue samples from 589 men and women who were hospitalized with a severe form of coronavirus. All of them underwent a bronchoscopy procedure to clear their lungs. The doctors determined the composition of microbes, bacteria and fungi present in the tissues, as well as the amount of SARS-CoV-2 virus and the type of immune cells.

Scientists have found that people who died from coronavirus had an average of ten times more viral load in the lower respiratory tract than recovered severe patients. At the same time, experts did not find evidence that the cause of death was a secondary bacterial infection, however, according to the authors of the work, this may be due to the fact that almost all seriously ill patients were prescribed a course of antibiotics.