Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Aug;30(4):331-333.
doi: 10.1007/s10286-020-00715-z. Epub 2020 Jul 15.

Is 'happy hypoxia' in COVID-19 a disorder of autonomic interoception? A hypothesis

Affiliations

Is 'happy hypoxia' in COVID-19 a disorder of autonomic interoception? A hypothesis

Alejandra González-Duarte et al. Clin Auton Res. 2020 Aug.
No abstract available

Keywords: COVID-19; Dyspnea; Hypoxia; “Happy hypoxemia”.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors of this article have nothing to disclose.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Neurophysiology of dyspnea. Main afferent (sensory) homeostatic information arising from areas of the vasculature and lungs give rise to the sensation of dyspnea. When stimulated, the chemoreceptive and mechanoreceptive signals are transmitted to the brainstem via the glossopharyngeal and vagus nerves, converging at the nucleus of the tractus solitarus (NTS). Subsequent projections continue to the somatosensory cortex and other higher brain regions, which provide the interoceptive sense of the internal environment of the body. The processing of these signals within the cortex gives rise to sensations such as air hunger, dyspnea, or shortness of breath. This interceptive processing appears to be abnormally blunted in patients with coronavirus disease 2019

References

    1. Archer SL, Sharp WW, Weir EK. Differentiating COVID-19 pneumonia from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE): therapeutic implications. Circulation. 2020 doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.047915. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wei-jie G, Zheng-yi N, Yu H, et al. Clinical characteristics of Coronavirus disease 2019 in China. N Engl J Med. 2020;382:1708–1720. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2002032. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Robinson D, Gebhart F. Inside information-the unique features of visceral sensation. Mol Interv. 2008;8(5):242–253. doi: 10.1124/mi.8.5.9. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Burki N, Lee L. Mechanisms of dyspnea. Chest. 2010;1385:1196–1201. doi: 10.1378/chest.10-0534. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Coolen T, Lolli V, Sadeghi N, et al. Early postmortem brain MRI findings in COVID-19 non-survivors. Neurology. 2020 doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000010116. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources