Yet parts of my body will feel as if they no longer belong to me - a dead finger, a numb foot and a spreading chill that sits deep in my bones. Some days the sweeping muscle aches will already be there, a crawling fire in my thighs and calves. I did a mental scan of my body and tried to estimate what kind of day it will be. Today I woke up, as I have done for most of the past 100 days, with a sense of dread. The study was a collaboration between scientists at Macquarie University, the Queensland Brain Institute, the University of Queensland and the University of Helsinki. Prof Ittner said the team had also started a research program to understand the impact of COVID infections on the brain and how this could impact the progression, outcome and onset of dementia.Ĭompounds to treat COVID are also under development. The study, published in the Science Advances journal on Wednesday, is hoped to contribute to an understanding of the long-term impact of COVID-19 infections The researchers said their discovery offered a potential explanation for persistent neurological effects after infection from a range of viruses, including HIV, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, measles, herpes and Zika.
'Once fusion takes place, each switch either turns on both the kitchen and bathroom lights at the same time, or neither of them,' Prof Hilliard said. Prof Hilliard said the effect of the proteins on neurons was like connecting the light switches of a kitchen and a bathroom, which was 'bad news' for having both circuits functioning correctly. The SARS-CoV-2 virus particle is covered in spike proteins across its round surface and has been found in the brains of people with 'long COVID' months after initial infection.
Professor Massimo Hilliard from the Queensland Brain Institute said researchers were able to observe for the first time how the spike proteins from a virus caused brain cells to fuse within 24 hours of exposure. Some of the brains were infected with the SARS-Cov-2 virus and then compared with non-infected control brains.Įxperiments showed how the viral-induced brain cell fusion occurred and documented the effects on the nervous system. 'We reprogram human stem cells into brain cells, including neurons, and allow them to assemble into mini-brains in a dish,' associate professor and molecular biologist Yazi Ke said. The 'mini brains' allow researchers to experiment on live tissue and complex human neuronal networks resembling a live human brain, bridging the gap between non-living tissue and human subjects. Researchers have found that brain-cell fusion caused by COVID-19 can lead to long-term symptoms
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