COVID-19's Impact on the Brain: New Evidence Emerges

[Ygggdrasil]

Here's a nice news piece from Nature summarizing various studies to find the underlying causes behind the neurological symptoms associated with COVID-19. In particular, the article highlights studies suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 can infect astrocytes in the brain, that SARS-CoV-2 can affect blood flow to the brain through infection of pericytes, and that COVID-19 can induce autoantibodies that attack the brain.

How COVID-19 damages the brain is becoming clearer. New evidence suggests that the coronavirus’s assault on the brain could be multipronged: it might attack certain brain cells directly, reduce blood flow to brain tissue or trigger production of immune molecules that can harm brain cells.

Infection with the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 can cause memory loss, strokes and other effects on the brain. The question, says Serena Spudich, a neurologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, is: “Can we intervene early to address these abnormalities so that people don’t have long-term problems?”

With so many people affected — neurological symptoms appeared in 80% of the people hospitalized with COVID-19 who were surveyed in one study1 — researchers hope that the growing evidence base will point the way to better treatments.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01693-6

 

[atyy]

What! How does that happen, is there ACE2 on astrocytes?

Hmmm, google suggests https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.030650v1 which says it's even on neurons.

 

[Astronuc]

From August 2020, Severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and glial cells: Insights and perspectives
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354620300922

Glial cells, such as astrocytes and microglia, play pivotal roles in the brain response to neuroinflammatory insults and neurodegenerative diseases. Further, accumulating evidence has shown that those cells are targets of several neurotropic viruses that severely impact their function. Glial cell dysfunctions have been associated with several neuroinflammatory diseases, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 likely has a primary effect on these cells in addition to a secondary effect from neuronal damage. Here, we provide an overview of these data and discuss the possible implications of glial cells as targets of SARS-CoV-2. Considering the roles of microglia and astrocytes in brain inflammatory responses, we shed light on glial cells as possible drivers and potential targets of therapeutic strategies against neurological manifestations in patients with COVID-19.