Our body is structured to fight against foreign invaders. This can only be done by our immune system. Everyday by day we keep on contacting one disease to the other without knowing what our body is doing for us.
Today I use to see children playing carelessly in a dirty environment where bacteria are found in a huge quantity. Most of them are being trained and brought up in a very poor family that knows nothing about the well being of a growing child.
To me, I always feel bad whenever I see a child in such situations despite the fact that I have passed through that. The worst part of it is drinking a water that is highly contaminated from a nearby gutter all in the name of water scarcity.
Well, the life we live today is dependent on our immune system.
Today I will be discussing on another important topic called spleen. What function does this organ perform in the body and how can it be linked with covid 19 if surgically removed(splenectomy)
Well, this topic may be a little bit confusing but I advise you wait patiently as we go down to explain it in details.
what is spleen
Spleen is a fist sized organ found in the upper left of the abdomen. This organ plays a very important role in the body and help maintain a healthy living. Some persons are born without spleen while in others it is surgically removed due to one disease or the other.
If spleen can be removed, does that mean we can actually survive without it.
Well, people can survive in the absence of spleen but maintaining a healthy living life after spleen removal should be abide with to avoid untimely death.
I have seen someone whose spleen was surgically removed due to some setting infection that nearly claimed his life.
After like two to three months of splenectomy (removal of the spleen), he was very much healthy but later died one year later. Then I had little or no knowledge about spleen removal and what lies ahead after you must have removed your spleen. But now I think it is more clearer unlike before when I know nothing about its function.
Coming back to our topic, spleen can be splitted into two different parts which includes the white and the red pulp.
The white pulp of the spleen helps to produce a good number of white blood cells in the body. This white blood cells found in the body helps to produce a antibody that fights against any invading or foreign pathogens.
Coming to the red pulp, it's function is mainly filtration. It helps to filter any organism or waste product from the blood. It also helps to remove damaged blood cells and can as well combat bacteria and viral infections.
Splenectomy can actually be caused by so many things. People who suffer from spleen disease may be due to blood cancer, hodgkin lymphoma, mononucleosis and many of them.
Once the spleen gets affected it starts swelling up causing what we known as splenomegaly(enlargement of the spleen).
Ruptured spleen is another problem of the spleen. Spleen can get ruptured due to car accident. Ruptured spleen leads to internal bleeding which could be detrimental if something is not done. This actually leads to increase in heart beat, nausea and dizziness.
Spleen can also be affected when someone has functional asplenia. This is a situation whereby the spleen does not function the way it should due to over reaction known as hypersplenism. This reaction also leads to bruising and bleeding of the spleen.
Looking at all this factors that can actually cause damage to the spleen.
If paradventure the spleen loses it function and got removed, how do you think the body can be able to cope without the presence of spleen.
the spleen and covid 19
Like we said earlier spleen has a lot of functions, but here I will be detailing on the aspect of antibody production.
In the body spleen is found to be one of the(if not all) major organ that helps to produce antibody against any pathogens or disease. This organ is known to be the major backbone behind our survival due to its increase rate of white blood cell production.
When this organ is removed from the body a lot of factors comes into play. The liver starts to accommodate some of the work the spleen performs. The presence of liver makes it possible for human to actually survive without spleen.
But even though the liver does 50% of the spleen work there is still so many things which the liver may not actually be performing well in.
Take for instance our body immunity. So many people survives from one particular infection or the other due to the presence of antibody which helps the body to fight against microorganisms.
I could remember during the out break of covid 19. Some persons have mild to no symptoms due to their body immunity while others could not survive the pandemic. Well, if something of this can happen what about those people who are immunocompromised and those whose spleen are no longer there. What would actually be their faith in surviving this covid outbreak.
People whose spleen have been removed suffer from one infection to the other. This is because of the inability of the body to produce enough number of antibody needed to combat the infection. Due to this, there body could not be able to withstand any form of bacteria infection not to talk of the so called covid which is now a trending devastating virus.
I can comfortably say that people who in one way or the other have any diseases that may hinder the production of antibodies will have a very slim chances of surviving any infection.
conclusion
In this article you will be able to understand that antibody is the main reason why we are alive. Some of the diseases which should have pose a lot of effect to our health have in one way or the other been eliminated due to our body immune system.
Building up our immune system we go along way towards helping us to cutail the increase rate of infection that have actually dominated everywhere.
Lastly, maintaining a good hygienic environment and cutailing some of the things that could increase the body rate of getting infection should be minimize in patient whose spleen has been removed in other to increase their life expectancy.
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In many countries we seem to have gone to the other extreme: sterilized environments! Some dirt is apparently good for kids. Contaminated water, however, is universally bad!
The "Hygience Hypothesis": https://www.everydayhealth.com/allergies/cleaning-and-allergies.aspx
Lets housekeepers off the hook ;))
😄
When reading this blog, I was first wondering what spleen was, and I needed to refer to a dictionary to get its French equivalent. Of course I knew the existence of the French term. I nevertheless ignored how to say this in English, and I moreover had no idea about the role of the spleen in our body. I am quite ignorant on this matter ;)
What amazed me most is how other organs take over when it is removed. The body is finally quite well done... Now my question to your post: do you have some numbers about COVID deaths among people with their spleen removed? One of the references you shared says that there is no higher risk of infection, but that there may be a higher risk of a severe form of the disease. That does not sound too critical, IMO. Any thoughts?
Well, I only know of one patient whose spleen was removed last year. Though he died this year.
The problem is, people that doesn't have spleen are rare to find. You only see them once in a while. But the problem about removing spleen is that the body cannot fully fight against infection like it use to.
I see. It is thus hard to get quantitative estimates just because of statistics.
I didn't check carefully the study above concerning the amount of individuals in the test samples. We are indeed discussing hundreds of people, which leads to a large statistical uncertainty. In other words, statistics make it quite hard to conclude in one way or the other, which is probably why the authors have used the conditional tense in their abstract.
Thanks for coming back to me. Cheers!
This was fascinating. I have left a small tip in place of the vote, because it is too late to vote. I'm aware of the issue of splenectomy because of its association with Thalassemia major--this is a procedure people with this disease sometimes have to undergo. I know from prior reading that people with Thalassmeia major are at high risk of hospitalization and death from COVID. It seems that those who have splenectomy are definitely at high risk. I found an article, not too recent (June of 2021), that looks at outcomes. The article places the risk of this group, once infected, in the same category as those with hypertension, respiratory disease, chronic heart disease and reduced kidney function. However, loss of spleen doesn't seem to increase the risk of getting infected. An interesting thing happens, though, after infection. In those patients who do have spleens, COVID tends to attack that organ. There is a high incidence of spleen damage in those 'healthy' people. This article appeared in the journal Internal and Emergency Medicine.
Thanks for a great read. Whenever I go scurrying to look up more information, you know the article was good :))
Yea, people with thalassemia major is also at risk.
Thank you so much for the contribution bro