SAN DIEGO- When people think of the symptoms related to COVID-19, they often think of it as a respiratory tract infection. But the symptoms can be really general, and new research being done at UC San Diego School of Medicine shows it.
“What we’ve learned all year since COVID-19 arrived, although the target site of the infection is the lungs, but the consequences we see in humans are related to the heart, brain and many other things.” Tariq Rana, professor and chief of the Department of Genetics in the Division of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Moores Cancer Center.
This led the researchers to two questions: Does the virus infect every organ in the body in the same way? And the problems we are seeing with the virus are due to the way our body reacts to the infection?
UCSD researchers use stem cells to create, for analysis, 3D organ-like structures that represent the lungs and brain.
The representation of the virus in both the brain and the lungs was significantly more common in the lungs.
UC San Diego
“When a virus infects cells, there are molecules on the surface, they are like doorknobs, and it turns out there are 10 times more doorknobs in the lungs than in the brain. It makes sense that there is more infection in the lungs than in the brain, ”Rana explains.
This, in turn, affects how the virus is treated when it attacks different organs.
Researchers are also looking at the virus’ effects on people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds to hopefully offer more specific treatment options.
Researchers at UC San Diego are now also focusing their efforts on creating new vaccines to hopefully test and ultimately help in the fight against the deadly disease.
Click here to see the full study.