Protecting and treating those at high risk of severe infections is a paramount public health concern underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although vulnerability to infection may seem like a unidirectional dilemma for certain preexisting conditions, when it comes to metabolic disorders such as diabetes, the relationship to severe COVID-19 infection is a two-way street. In one lane, individuals with diabetes are predisposed to severe viral infections, and in the other, SARS-CoV-2 infection can exacerbate underlying metabolic syndromes by increasing blood glucose.1
“There's this complex relationship between blood glucose and COVID,” explained Jie Sun, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. “The underlying mechanism is still very much unknown.” Sun’s research examines respiratory infections and immunometabolism—the interface between immunology and metabolism. To learn more about the mechanisms linking metabolism and viral infection severity, Sun and his research team investigated a metabolic protein called mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC) and ...
