Study finds Covid virus mutation that causes infection in central nervous system

NEW DELHI: Scientists have found a mutation in the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, that can cause infection in the brain’s central nervous system.

The discoveries might clarify the riddle of "long Covid" and its neurological symptoms for scientists. In the future, they might potentially result in the development of targeted therapies to shield and eradicate the virus from the brain.

Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago recently conducted a cooperative study which has been published today, in Nature Microbiology that revealed several alterations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is the outer portion of the virus that aids in cell penetration and increases the virus's capacity to infect mice's brains.

To decode the genomes of viruses that replicated in the brain as opposed to the lung, researchers infected mice with SARS-CoV-2 for this study.

The spike protein in the lung bore a striking resemblance to the virus that infected the mice. However, the majority of viruses in the brain have a mutation or deletion in a crucial spike area that controls how the virus enters a cell. When mice's brains were directly infected with viruses carrying this deletion, the damage was mostly healed upon reaching the lungs.

“In order for the virus to traffic from the lung to the brain, it requires changes in the spike protein that are already known to dictate how the virus gets into different types of cells,” said Judd Hultquist assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) and microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“We think this region of spike is a critical regulator of whether or not the virus gets into the brain, and it could have large implications for the treatment and management of neurological symptoms reported by Covid-19 patients,” Hultquist added.