Presence Of 'Abnormal Cells' Leads to COVID-19 Lung Damage

Investigation of deceased COVID-19 patients has shed light on possible lung damage caused by the virus.

Why patients suffer from 'long COVID'? The answer was given in the study published in The Lancet's eBioMedicine by the King's College London in collaboration with the University of Trieste and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biology in Italy.

Some patients with COVID-19 survive the infection can experience the effects of the disease for months - known as 'long COVID' - with a feeling of fatigue and lack of breath.

Coronavirus
Coronaviruses infect animals, humans, and birds. Human coronaviruses, such as SARS, MERS, and 2019-nCoV cause respiratory distress and even death. The S protein is the infectious agent of the virus.

‘COVID-19 is not simply a disease caused by the death of virus-infected cells but is likely the consequence of abnormal cells persisting for long periods inside the lungs.’
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Researchers analyzed the organs of 41 patients who died of COVID-19 at the University Hospital of Trieste, Italy, from February to April 2020, at the start of the pandemic. They used tissues like lung, heart, liver, and kidney samples to examine the behavior of the virus.

There is extensive lung damage in most cases, with patients experiencing profound disruption of the normal lung structure and the transformation of respiratory tissue into fibrotic material.

Almost 90% of patients showed quite unique features of COVID-19 compared to other forms of pneumonia. Extensive blood clotting of the lung arteries and veins (thrombosis). And, abnormally large and had many nuclei, resulting from the fusion of different cells into single large cells.

This formation of fused cells (syncytia) is due to the viral spike protein, which stimulates the fusion with other normal lung cells, which can be a cause for inflammation and thrombosis.

Long-term persistence of the viral genome in respiratory cells and in cells lining the blood vessels, along with the infected cell syncytia can cause the major structural changes observed in lungs, which can persist for several weeks or months and could eventually explain 'long COVID'.

Professor Mauro Giacca, at the British Heart Foundation Centre at King's College London, said: "These findings are very exciting. The findings indicate that COVID-19 is not simply a disease caused by the death of virus-infected cells but is likely the consequence of these abnormal cells persisting for long periods inside the lungs."

Source-Medindia