Coronavirus may enter the brain by building tiny tunnels from the nose

The person is Alice Klein.

New research shows that the covid-19 enters the brain by stimulating the growth of tiny tubes between nose and brain cells.

There are a number of neurological symptoms associated with Covid-19. People's brains have been found to have the coronaviruses. It has been a mystery how it got there. The cells lining the nose, mouth and lungs are more resistant to the viruses than the brain.

Chiara Zurzolo and her colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in France have found a way for the coronaviruses to get into cells that don't have theACE2 Receptor.

Experiments were done with the coronaviruses and two different cell types. A model of human brain cells was created. Vero E6 was used to model cells that line the body's surface.

The brain cells didn't have theACE2 receptor so they couldn't be exposed to the coronaviruses. When they were put in the same dish as the model nose cells, they got sick.

The researchers were able to see that the virus stimulated the nose cells to grow tunnelling tubes that formed connections with the brain cells.

The virus used the tunnels to move between the two cell types. Some structures and viral particles can be transported between distant cells with the help of tubes.

Frederic Meunier says that the study provides a neat mechanism by which the virus can be transferred from one cell to another.

Due to the limited nature of the experiments, further studies are needed to confirm the same mechanism occurs inside the brain.

Zurzolo's group is setting up experiments that mimic the brain and nose.

We may be able to develop drugs to block coronaviruses if tunnelling nanotubes are confirmed to transport them to the brain. She says that they don't have a specific tunnelling molecule, but that they are looking for one.

Science Advances was published in the journal.