SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus can enter the brain

Scientists interested in brain neurons that express the ACE2 receptor. This is the same receptor due to which the new coronavirus penetrates the lungs. Researchers have thus suggested that it can also enter brain cells.

In laboratory conditions, scientists have grown an organoid from human cells – the “mini brain”, which is a kind of brain model and introduced the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus into it. As a result, they received the first evidence of cell infection and pathogen replication.

However, scientists say that the human brain is much more complex structure than the “cell imitation” on which the experiment was conducted. The brain has a blood-brain barrier that protects it from infection. Therefore, researchers are not likely to say if SARS-CoV-2 can overcome this barrier.

But at the same time, according to one of the authors of the scientific work, Thomas Hartung, the serious inflammation that is observed in patients with COVID-19 can destroy this protective barrier. In general, the study, scientists believe that more in-depth studies are needed on the effects of SARS-CoV-2 on the human brain.

Previously, Popular Mechanics already wrote that Italian doctors for the first time managed to record changes in the brain of a patient with a COVID-19 patient with MRI with symptoms of loss of smell and taste disorder.

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