The new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) virus spreads to all organs of the human body, including the brain and heart, within just a few days after infection, and can stay in the body for several months, a study has found. Whether the COVID-19 virus can infect cells other than the respiratory tract has been a subject of debate in the scientific community for a long time, attracting a lot of attention.
According to Bloomberg News on the 26th (local time), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted an autopsy study of 44 patients who died from COVID-19 last year, and as a result, the COVID-19 virus spreads to the brain and heart within a few days, as well as the lungs and respiratory tract. It was reported that they found that it was replicated and spread to other cells in the body.
The NIH research team explained that as a result of autopsy and analysis of six patients who died a month after the onset of symptoms of COVID-19, Corona 19 virus ribonucleic acid (RNA) was detected in various parts of the brain of all of them. Even 230 days after the onset of COVID-19, viral RNA was found in other cells in the body, such as the brain.
On the 23rd, a research team at the University of Southern Texas at San Antonio Health Sciences Center in the U.S. also presented a result that the immune memory of Corona 19 in the body lasts longer when the patient has a mild illness and is cured rather than a severe Corona 19 patient. They compared the immune memory cells (B cells) in the blood of 5 severely ill patients and 8 mild patients who received ECMO, and found that the rate of increase in B cells in mild patients was higher.
Reporter Kim Ye-yoon yeah@donga.com
