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The coronavirus spike protein, often depicted as the virus’s red arms, can cross the blood-brain barrier in mice, the researchers found.
There is growing evidence that people with COVID-19 suffer cognitive effects, such as mental confusion and fatigue.
The new finding strongly suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, can enter the brain.
The spike protein, often called the S1 protein, dictates which cells the virus can enter. Typically, the virus does the same thing as its binding protein, says lead author William A. Banks, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a physician and researcher with the Veterans Affairs Health System of the United States. Puget Sound. Banks says that binding proteins like S1 generally on their own cause damage as they shed the virus and cause inflammation.
“The S1 protein probably causes the brain to release cytokines and inflammatory products,” he says.
The intense inflammation caused by COVID-19 infection is called a cytokine storm. The immune system, seeing the virus and its proteins, overreacts in its attempt to kill the invading virus. The infected person is left with brain fog, fatigue, and other cognitive problems.
Banks and his team saw this reaction with the HIV virus and wanted to see if the same was happening with SARS CoV-2.
Banks says that the S1 protein in SARS-CoV2 and the gp 120 protein in HIV-1 work similarly. They are glycoproteins, proteins that have many sugars, characteristics of proteins that bind to other receptors. Both proteins function as arms and hands for your viruses by latching onto other receptors. Both cross the blood-brain barrier, and S1, like gp120, is probably toxic to brain tissues.
“It was like déjà vu,” says Banks, who has done extensive work on HIV-1, gp120 and the blood-brain barrier.
Banks’ lab studies the blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes, and HIV. But they put their work on hold and the 15 people in the lab began their experiments with the S1 protein in April.
The study could explain many of the complications of COVID-19.
“We know that when you have the COVID infection you have trouble breathing and that is because there is an infection in the lung, but an additional explanation is that the virus enters the respiratory centers of the brain and causes problems there as well,” says Banks .
Jacob Raber, a professor in the departments of behavioral neuroscience, neurology, and radiation medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, says that, in his experiments, S1 transport was faster in the olfactory bulb and kidney of the men than women. This observation could be related to men’s increased susceptibility to the most severe COVID-19 results.
As for people who take the virus lightly, Banks has a message:
“You don’t want to mess with this virus,” he says. “Many of the effects that the COVID virus has could be accentuated or perpetuated or even caused by the virus entering the brain and these effects could last a long time.
The study appears in Neuroscience of nature.
This study was partially supported by a COVID-19 supplement funded by the National Institute on Aging to a shared RF1 grant from Banks and Raber.
Source: University of Washington
