New findings on how to avert excessive weight loss from COVID-19

Losing too much weight when infected with COVID-19 has been linked to worse outcomes. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have discovered that SARS-CoV-2 infection fuels blood vessel formation in fat tissues, thus revving up the body’s thermogenic metabolism. Blocking this process by using an existing drug curbed weight loss in mice and hamsters that were infected with the virus, according to the study published in the journal Nature Metabolism.