Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians have noted that certain patients are at especially high risk of developing severe illness or dying from coronavirus infection. Type 2 diabetes—a condition affecting more than 10 percent of the U.S. population—is one of the main risk factors for severe COVID-19 illness. New research from U-M uncovers why this might be and offers hope for a potential therapy.

The culprit appears to be an enzyme called SETDB2. This same enzyme has been implicated in the non-healing, inflammatory wounds found in people with diabetes. Working in the lab of Katherine Gallagher, M.D. of the Michigan Medicine Departments of Surgery and Microbiology and Immunology, researcher W. James Melvin, M.D., and his colleagues decided to probe a possible link between the enzyme and the runaway inflammation they witnessed first-hand in COVID patients in the ICU.

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