Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistence in the human body and brain at autopsy

2022; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 612; Issue: 7941 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/s41586-022-05542-y

1476-4687

Sydney Stein, Sabrina Ramelli, Alison Grazioli, Joon‐Yong Chung, Manmeet Singh, Claude Kwe Yinda, Clayton W. Winkler, Junfeng Sun, James Dickey, Kris Ylaya, Sung Hee Ko, Andrew P. Platt, Peter D. Burbelo, Martha Quezado, Stefania Pittaluga, Madeleine Purcell, Vincent J. Munster, Frida Belinky, Marcos J. Ramos-Benítez, Eli Boritz, Izabella A. Lach, Daniel Herr, Joseph Rabin, Kapil Saharia, Ronson J. Madathil, Ali Tabatabai, Shahabuddin Soherwardi, Michael T. McCurdy, Ashley L. Babyak, Luis Perez Valencia, Shelly J. Curran, Mary Richert, Willie J. Young, Sarah P. Young, Billel Gasmi, Michelly Sampaio De Melo, Sabina Desar, Saber Tadros, Nadia Nasir, Xueting Jin, Sharika Rajan, Esra Dikoglu, Neval Ozkaya, Grace Smith, Elizabeth Emanuel, Brian L. Kelsall, Justin A. Olivera, Megan Blawas, Robert A. Star, Nicole Hays, Shreya Singireddy, Jocelyn Wu, Katherine Raja, Ryan Curto, Jean E. Chung, Amy Borth, Kimberly Bowers, Anne Weichold, Paula A. Minor, Mir Ahmad N. Moshref, Emily E. Kelly, Mohammad M. Sajadi, Thomas M. Scalea, Douglas Tran, Siamak Dahi, Kristopher B. Deatrick, Eric Krause, Joseph A. Herrold, Eric Hochberg, Christopher R. Cornachione, Andrea R. Levine, Justin E. Richards, John Elder, Allen P. Burke, Michael Mazzeffi, Robert H. Christenson, Zackary A. Chancer, Mustafa Abdulmahdi, Sabrina Sopha, Tyler Goldberg, Yashvir Sangwan, Kristen Sudano, Diane Blume, Bethany Radin, David E. Kleiner, James W. Eagan, Robert E. Palermo, Anthony Harris, Thomas J. Pohida, Marcial Garmendia‐Cedillos, George Dold, Eric Saglio, Phuoc Pham, Karin E. Peterson, Jeffrey I. Cohen, Emmie de Wit, Kevin M. Vannella, Stephen M. Hewitt, David E. Kleiner, Daniel S. Chertow,

SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is known to cause multi-organ dysfunction1–3 during acute infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), with some patients experiencing prolonged symptoms, termed post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (refs. 4,5). However, the burden of infection outside the respiratory tract and time to viral clearance are not well characterized, particularly in the brain3,6–14. Here we carried out complete autopsies on 44 patients who died with COVID-19, with extensive sampling of the central nervous system in 11 of these patients, to map and quantify the distribution, replication and cell-type specificity of SARS-CoV-2 across the human body, including the brain, from acute infection to more than seven months following symptom onset. We show that SARS-CoV-2 is widely distributed, predominantly among patients who died with severe COVID-19, and that virus replication is present in multiple respiratory and non-respiratory tissues, including the brain, early in infection. Further, we detected persistent SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including throughout the brain, as late as 230 days following symptom onset in one case. Despite extensive distribution of SARS-CoV-2 RNA throughout the body, we observed little evidence of inflammation or direct viral cytopathology outside the respiratory tract. Our data indicate that in some patients SARS-CoV-2 can cause systemic infection and persist in the body for months. A study reports the distribution, replication and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 throughout the human body including in the brain at autopsy from acute infection to more than seven months following symptom onset.