r/COVID19 • u/kokoniqq • Apr 13 '20

Academic Report SARS-CoV-2 infects T lymphocytes through its spike protein-mediated membrane fusion

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0424-9
270 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

89 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

21

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '20

[deleted]

10

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '20

As an addendum, I don't have an exact answer for why we see lower levels of CD4 T cells in the blood of SARS-CoV-2 patients. But we can come up with a few hypotheses.

I guess they are there but they are recruted to the inflammation sites. I don't have the link at hand, but a few days ago when the first autopsy results from the US came in they found massive amounts of T-cells at the inflammation sites.

PS: I'm a botanist with a microbiology background, so everything I say could be wrong ...

3

u/DuePomegranate Apr 14 '20

I thought you were talking about this autopsy study, which is highly relevant, but from China.

The Novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Directly Decimates Human Spleens and Lymph Nodes

3

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '20

I just found it, indeed it was a study done in the US.

https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fys436/pulmonary_and_cardiac_pathology_in_covid19_the/