I'm seeing more articles about how the covid 19 virus spreads beyond the lungs, and potential ways to treat patients when this happens.
>>>The key is direct and indirect damage to the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels, particularly in the lungs, explains Peter Carmeliet, a vascular biologist at the Belgian research institute VIB and co-author of a 21 May paper in Nature Reviews Immunology. By attacking those cells, COVID-19 infection causes vessels to leak and blood to clot. Those changes in turn spark inflammation throughout the body and fuel the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) responsible for most patient deaths.<<<
www.sciencemag.org
>>>In a paper published in April in the scientific journal
The Lancet, Mehra and a team of scientists discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect the endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels. Endothelial cells protect the cardiovascular system, and they release proteins that influence everything from blood clotting to the immune response. In the paper, the scientists showed damage to endothelial cells in the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, and intestines in people with Covid-19.
“The concept that’s emerging is that this is not a respiratory illness alone, this is a respiratory illness to start with, but it is actually a vascular illness that kills people through its involvement of the vasculature,” says Mehra.<<<
Many of the infection’s bizarre symptoms have one thing in common
elemental.medium.com
>>>[W]hen the authors of the present study looked at the peptide sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, they found evidence that newly acquired mutations allow the virus to exploit both furin and TMPRSS2 cleavage sites.
These mutations have given the virus the ability to infect a wider variety of tissues in the body.
“In other words, SARS-CoV-2, unlike other, less pathogenic strains, can more efficiently use both proteases, TMPRSS2 and furin, to start the invasion of host cells,” says Maurizio Pellecchia, a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of California, Riverside, who led the research team.
“While TMPRSS2 is more abundant in the lungs, furin is expressed in other organs, perhaps explaining why SARS-CoV-2 is capable of invading and damaging multiple organs.”<<<
Researchers find that a new drug could target the enzymes that enable the new coronavirus to invade healthy cells, possibly preventing this.
www.medicalnewstoday.com
