Cell Res: Breakthrough! Chinese scientists have discovered for the first time that SARS-CoV-2 could potentially infect human nerve cells and brain-like organs!

September 4, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Cell Research, scientists from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Hong Kong found that SARS-CoV-2 may infect human nerve cells and brain-like organs.
SARS-CoV-2 induces COVID-19, a new type of coronavirus infection, and as of August 3, 2020, there were more than 17 million COVID-19 patients worldwide, of whom more than 686,703 died.
Photo Source: SIAT, a new coronavirus, mainly causes respiratory diseases, and clinical symptoms are very similar to SARS infections, however, patients with COVID-19 often report a variety of neurological symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, Alzheimer's disease, confusion, epilepsy and brain disease.
study of 214 PATIENT COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital in Wuhan showed that 36.4% of patients and 45.5% of severe cases had neurotic symptoms, and studies conducted in France and Germany also found that 84.5% and 36.4% of COVID-19 patients had brain infections.
, however, there is no experimental evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can cause infections in the human central nervous system.
To explore in physiologically relevant models whether SARS-CoV-2 is really involved in the infection of the human central nervous system, researchers evaluated SARS-CoV-2 infections in human neurogenesic cells (hNPCs), neurospheres, and brain organs derived from ernipotent stem cells (iPSCs). The results suggest that ipsC-derived hNPCs may allow SARS-CoV-2 infection, but not SARS-CoV infection, and researchers have detected a wide range of protein expression and infectious viral particles in SARS-CoV-2-infected nerve pellets and brain-like organs, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 may potentially infect the structure of the human brain.
Importantly, SARS-CoV-2 infections in 3-D human brain organs may be confined to TUJ1 (neuromarkers) and NESTIN (NPC markers)-positive cells, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 directly targets acting cortological neuron cells and NPCs.
In conclusion, researcher Professor Huang Jiandong said the study presents the first evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection of human brain-like organs, which may help us understand the pathological mechanisms of neuropsyurological complications in patients with COVID-19 later, and we need to conduct more in-depth studies to closely monitor the chronic and long-term consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the human central nervous system.
() Original source: Zhang, B., Chu, H., Han, S. et al. SARS-CoV-2 infects human neural progenitor cells and brain organoids. Cell Res (2020). doi:10.1038/s41422-020-0390-x.