The virus that causes Covid-19, the SASR-CoV-2 coronavirus, spreads throughout the body. A study that analyzed tissue samples from 44 autopsies from people who died with Covid-19 shows that the SAR-CoV-2 virus spread throughout the body – including the brain – and that it remained for almost eight months. The finding was published in Nature.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) analyzed autopsy samples performed between April 2020 and March 2021. They performed extensive sampling of the nervous system, including the brain, in 11 of the patients.
All patients died with Covid-19 and none was vaccinated. Blood plasma from 38 patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, three tested negative, and plasma was not available for the other 3.
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 mean interval from symptom onset to death was 18.5 days.
The analyzes showed that SARS-CoV-2, as expected, mainly infected and damaged the airways and lung tissue.
But the researchers also found Viral RNA at 84 body locations and fluids different body parts, and in one case they isolated viral RNA 230 days after the onset of a patient’s symptoms.
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 others. But they found little damage to brain tissue, “despite the significant viral load.”
The experts also isolated viable SARS-CoV-2 viruses from various tissues inside and outside the respiratory tract, including the brain, heart, lymph nodes, gastrointestinal tract, adrenal gland, and eye. They isolated the virus in 25 of the 55 samples analyzed (45%).
The authors write: “We demonstrated virus replication at multiple non-respiratory sites during the first 2 weeks after symptom onset.”
Discovering the presence of the virus throughout the organism helped to explore a relationship between widely infected body tissues and “persistent Covid”
The study’s lead author, Daniel Chertow, said in a news release that prior to the work, “the thinking was that SARS-CoV-2 was predominantly a respiratory virus.”
Discovering the presence of the virus throughout the body – and sharing those findings with colleagues a year ago – helped scientists explore a link between widely infected body tissues and “persistent Covid,” or symptoms that linger for weeks and months. after infection.