Brain Fog Due to COVID – No More a Mystery

Neurological damage due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is a long-standing issue in case of long COVID . To date, the access of coronaviruses to the brain is still a mystery. Researchers from Institut Pasteur have shed some light through an experiment about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus can enter brain cells. How does viral transfer happen?

Human neuronal SH-SY5Y cells , nonpermissive to SARS-CoV-2 through an exocytosis/endocytosis-dependent pathway, were found to be infected when cocultured with previously infected permissive Vero E6 epithelial cells. The virus builds nanotube tunnels from cells (Vero E6) that have the ACE2 receptors to use as an entrance to the brain (SH-SY5Y cells) as confirmed by Cryo-correlative light and electron microscopy( cryo-CLEM) and cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET). Tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) are actin-rich, thin,…