COVID: Can virus spread to heart & brain days after infection? Here's what new study says

COVID-19 can spread to heart and brain several days after infection in a patient, and beyond respiratory tract into organs where it can survive re for months causing debilitating side effects and long coronavirus symptoms, a new study has found. Researchers from US National Institutes of Health (NIH) claim in ir news study found that COVID-19 can cause multi-organ dysfunction in case of acute infection and lead to prolonged symptoms experienced by some patients termed by scientists as ‘Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC)’.

However, intensity of this spread of infection outside respiratory tract and time to viral clearance is t well kwn to researchers. But scientists say that n-respiratory organs may have less efficient immune responses to virus and refore virus clearance in or organs including heart and brain may take up to 12 or more weeks among patients. Earlier, a New York Times report had also shockingly revealed how several patients, who have had COVID-19 disease, were showing psychotic symptoms across United States, including at South Oaks Hospital in New York, which ran a psychiatric treatment program for in-house COVID-19 patients. Dr. Hisam Goueli at  South Oaks Hospital told reporters that he had seen at least four patients with history of mental illness demonstrating psychotic symptoms after recovering from COVID-19 disease. 

" chances of having long-term symptoms does t seem to be linked to how ill you are when you first get COVID-19. People who had mild symptoms at first can still have long-term problems," researchers explain.

Scientists performed autopsies on 44 patients with COVID-19 in order to map and quantify SARS-CoV-2 virus distribution in patients’ bodies, its replication, and cell-type specificity in organs, including brain. y studied patients who suffered from acute COVID-19 infection for nearly seven months following symptom onset and found disturbing long COVID symptoms, particularly in brain.

“We detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout brain, for up to 230 days following symptom onset,” scientists wrote in study to be peer-reviewed for publication in journal Nature. 

SARS-CoV-2 causes changes in 'brain'

re have been comprehensive studies in past and clear evidence that SARS-CoV-2 causes profound molecular changes in brain, which was detected in people who died of COVID-19.  " signature virus leaves in brain speaks of strong inflammation and disrupted brain circuits and resembles signatures field has observed in Alzheimer's or or neurodegenerative diseases," senior author Tony Wyss-Coray, Ph.D., professor of neurology and neurological sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, told Medscape Medical News.

In new study, scientists at US National Institutes of Health in Maryland found that virus had actually spread well beyond respiratory tract in patients of COVID-19 and traces were present in several or organs where y survived for over months. delay in virus clearance, as per scientists, was biggest contributor to long-haul COVID and caused “post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2,” which US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes is associated with a range of long-lasting symptoms among those that previously contracted coronavirus. 

“ paper sheds some light and may help explain why long COVID can occur even in people who had mild or asymptomatic acute disease,” Al-Aly, who has led separate studies into long-term effects on COVID-19 said. “Our results collectively show that while highest-burden of SARS-CoV-2 is in airways and lung, virus can disseminate early during infection and infect cells throughout entire body, including widely throughout brain,” a team, led by Daniel Chertow from NIH’s emerging pathogens section said in study.