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Doctors suspect COVID delayed immune response in young surgeon’s death
A young orthopedic surgeon with OrthoSouth who died early Monday, Feb. 8, may be the nation’s first case of an adult who died of a delayed immune response to COVID and had received the vaccine.
Dr. J. Barton Williams died early Monday at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. He was 36.
“What we think so far is that he suffered from multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS),” said Baptist infectious disease expert Dr. Stephen Threlkeld.
The syndrome, more common in children, often looks and acts like Kawasaki disease, which causes inflammation in the blood vessels.
MIS is a reaction in someone who has had the COVID infection weeks or months earlier and mounted a severe, delayed immune reaction, which often causes significant damage to the organs.
Williams told doctors he was not aware of having had COVID and he tested negative several times in the hospital, which is not unusual, Threlkeld said, because he could have had COVID long enough ago that he would no longer test positive.
MIS is essentially an unchecked immunological response to the virus, said Dr. Scott Strome, executive dean of the College of Medicine at University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
“The immune system’s response is to eradicate the virus. One of its most fundamental features is its ability to turn itself off when it’s done,” Strome said.
“It has to know when it’s done. It if doesn’t have that, you get an autoimmune situation. Whatever the reason, the body still thinks it has a threat and doesn’t turn itself off. Then you get this systematic inflammation.”
https://dailymemphian.com/article/19893/surgeon-died-of-suspected-delayed-immune-response