COM Outlook Summer/Fall 2020

32 | DR. KIRAN C. PATEL COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE W hen you pass a small kidney stone, the doctor might suggest straining your urine to collect it for analysis. Its composition indicates how it formed in the first place. Is it made of calcium or uric acid? Does the urine contain funky crystals under a microscope? Preventing another painful kidney stone has everything to do with these findings. As I write this in late May, hundreds of thousands of people have died from COVID-19. Millions have lost their employment, and some have relapsed into depression or addiction while isolated indoors. Others feel a hole where their graduation or wedding would have been. What is the root cause? Genomic analy- sis of SARS-CoV-2, the responsible virus, traces it to a wet market in Wuhan, China, where myriad vendors keep wild and domesticated animals for fresh slaughter and sale. Two thirds of the initial COVID-19 victims had come in contact with this market, and certain animals there were soon confirmed to be SARS- CoV-2 carriers. The implicated species are horseshoe bats and pangolins, both of which are mammals. Native to Asia and Africa, pangolins are long-tongued insectivores adorned with an armor of keratin scales. They are also the most heavily trafficked mammals on Earth. Pangolin meat and scales are prized in traditional medicine for purported benefits like fertility and renal health. Such demand for pangolins placed them in the stacked cages of Wuhan’s wet market, where animals from around the world spend their last days before being dismembered. There are few settings more conduc- ive to the interspecies transmission of a novel virus than a wet market. Resident creatures often share cages with animals from different continents and lay in a combination of their own excrement and that which has fallen from above. Their cortisol levels are measurably elevated from stress, which suppresses immunity and further predisposes them to infection. BY ZACHARY BURNS Analyzing the Meat of the Matter RESEARCHER Zachary Burns