365NEWSX
365NEWSX
Subscribe

Welcome

The coronavirus infects fat cells, study shows - Livescience.com

The coronavirus infects fat cells, study shows - Livescience.com

The coronavirus infects fat cells, study shows - Livescience.com
Sep 23, 2022 1 min, 37 secs

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 directly infects fat cells and specific immune cells found in fat tissue, sparking inflammation that can then spread to uninfected "bystander" cells nearby. .

22 in the journal Science Translational Medicine (opens in new tab), scientists experimented with fat tissue obtained from patients undergoing bariatric, heart and chest surgeries, to see if the tissue could be infected by the coronavirus.

They also found that specific subsets of immune cells housed within the fat tissue, called macrophages, also became infected and kicked off a much more intense inflammatory response.

Notably, the virus could not make new copies of itself inside the macrophages — the pathogen could break into the immune cells, but the buck stopped there.

What's more, in two patients who died of COVID-19, the team found inflammatory immune cells had assembled around infected adipocytes in the fat tissue surrounding the heart.

Since the early days of the pandemic, people with obesity have faced a higher risk of developing severe symptoms, requiring hospitalization and dying from COVID-19, Live Science previously reported.

In addition, as fat builds up in the body, fat cells infiltrate the spleen, bone marrow and thymus, where many immune cells are produced.

This can weaken the immune system by both reducing the number and undermining the efficacy of immune cells produced.

Excess fat can also spur chronic, low-grade inflammation throughout the body, as fat cells release inflammatory substances called cytokines and macrophages do the same, in an effort to clear dead fat cells from the body, Science reported.

While all these factors may worsen COVID-19 outcomes for people with obesity, now there's this evidence that the virus infects fat cells directly. .

"It's reasonable to infer that having a lot of infected fat could contribute to the overall inflammatory profile of severely ill COVID-19 patients.".

That's because the study authors found negligible amounts of ACE2 — the main "doorway" that the virus uses to enter cells — in their tissue samples.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

RECENT NEWS

SUBSCRIBE

Get monthly updates and free resources.

CONNECT WITH US

© Copyright 2024 365NEWSX - All RIGHTS RESERVED