Extensive lung damage caused by the persistence of coroanvirus induced abnormal “fused cells,” is the reason for long sufferings such as tiredness and lack of breath of the Covid-19 infected patients, a study published in The Lancet’s eBioMedicine has said.
The observation by the scientists explains the reasons for Covid-19 patients’ complaining of fatigue and breathlessness besides other symptoms.
Rresearchers led by King’s College London analysed the organs of 41 patients who died of Covid-19 at the University Hospital of Trieste, Italy. The team took lung, heart, liver, and kidney samples to examine the behaviour of the virus.
The findings showed extensive lung damage in most cases, with patients experiencing profound disruption of the normal lung structure and the transformation of respiratory tissue into fibrotic material.
Almost 90 per cent of patients showed two additional characteristics that were quite unique to Covid-19 compared to other forms of pneumonia.
First, patients showed extensive blood clotting of the lung arteries and veins (thrombosis). Second, several lung cells were abnormally large and had many nuclei, resulting from the fusion of different cells into single large cells.
This formation of fused cells (syncytia) is due to the viral spike protein, which the virus uses to enter the cell. When the protein is present on the surface of cells infected by the Covid-19 virus, it
stimulates their fusion with other normal lung cells, which can be a cause for inflammation and thrombosis,” the authors wrote in a paper published in
The Lancet’s eBioMedicine, by King’s College London in collaboration with University of Trieste and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biology in Italy.
Additionally, research showed the long-term persistence of the viral genome in respiratory cells and in cells lining the blood vessels, along with the infected cell
syncytia. The presence of these infected cells can cause the major structural changes observed in lungs, which can persist for several weeks or months and could eventually explain ‘long Covid’.