Summary
COVID-19 is known to cause multi-organ dysfunction in acute infection, with prolonged symptoms experienced by some patients, termed Post-Acute Sequelae of SARSCoV-2 (PASC). However, the burden of infection outside the respiratory tract and time to viral clearance is not well characterised, particularly in the brain. Chertow et al. performed complete autopsies on 44 patients with COVID-19 to map and quantify SARS-CoV-2 distribution, replication, and cell-type specificity across the human body, including brain, from acute infection through over seven months following symptom onset.
The study showed that SARS-CoV-2 is widely distributed, even among patients who died with asymptomatic to mild COVID-19, and that virus replication is present in multiple pulmonary and extrapulmonary tissues early in infection. The authors detected persistent SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout the brain, for up to 230 days following symptom onset. Despite extensive distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in the body, the authors observed a paucity of inflammation or direct viral cytopathology outside of the lungs. The data prove that SARS-CoV-2 causes systemic infection and can persist in the body months.
* Note: This is a pre-print and has not been peer-reviewed yet.
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