Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) analyzed autopsy samples that were performed between April 2020 and March 2021 of patients who died with COVID-19. They took extensive samples of the nervous system, including the brain, in 11 of the patients. None of the patients was vaccinated. Blood plasma from 38 patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, three tested negative.
30% of the patients were women and the median age was 62.5 years. Twenty-seven patients (61.4%) had three or more comorbidities. The median interval from symptom onset to death was 18.5 days.
The analysis showed that SARS-CoV-2, as expected, mainly infected and damaged the airways and lung tissue. But the researchers also found viral RNA in 84 different locations in the body and body fluids, and in one case they isolated the viral RNA 230 days after the patient’s symptoms began.
The researchers detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA and protein in the hypothalamus and cerebellum of one patient and in the spinal cord and basal ganglia of two other patients. But they found little damage to brain tissue. The researchers also isolated viable SARS-CoV-2 virus from various tissues inside and outside the respiratory tract, including the brain, heart, lymph nodes, gastrointestinal tract, adrenal gland, and the eye. They isolated virus from 25 of 55 specimens tested (45%). They demonstrated virus replication at multiple non-respiratory sites during the first two weeks after symptom onset.
Finding viral presence throughout the body, and sharing those findings with colleagues a year ago, helped scientists explore a link between widely infected body tissues and “long-term COVID,” or symptoms that persist for weeks and months after infection. infection.
The study was published in the journal Nature.