🦠KILLING T CELLS: this could be extremely bad. Researchers in China and the US find that #SARSCoV2 virus that causes #Covid19 can destroy the T cells that are supposed to protect the body from harmful invaders. This was not true for SARS-1 or MERS. 🧵 scmp.com/news/china/soc…
2) T lymphocytes, also known as T cells, play a central role in identifying and eliminating alien invaders in the body. They capture a cell infected, bore a hole and inject toxic chemicals into the cell. These chemicals then kill both the virus and infected cell.
3) To the surprise of the scientists, the T cell became a prey to the coronavirus in their experiment. They found a unique structure in the virus’s spike protein that appeared to have triggered the fusion. The virus’s genes then entered the T cell and took it hostage. #COVID19
4) “researchers did the same experiment with Sars-1 and found that the Sars-1 virus did not have the ability to infect T cells. SARS-1 can only infect cells carrying a specific receptor protein known as ACE2, which has an extremely low presence in T cells”. #COVID19
5) “In February, Chen Yongwen and his colleagues warned that the number of T cells could drop significantly in Covid-19 patients, especially when they were elderly or required treatment in intensive care units. The lower the T cell count, the higher the risk of death.”
6) This observation was later confirmed by autopsy examinations on more than 20 patients, whose immune systems were almost completely destroyed. The gene behind the fusion function in Sars-CoV-2 was not found in other coronaviruses in human or animals. #COVID19
7) “But Lu and Jiang did not observe any growth of the coronavirus after it entered the T-cells, suggesting that the virus and T-cells might end up dying together.”
