What does Covid-19 have in common with Ebola and HIV?

Patients with Ebola and HIV get lymphopenia or low lymphocytes. The viruses in both conditions enter the cells and destroy the lymphocytes. The result is a weakened immune system.

Lymphopenia is also a common finding in the blood test of Covid-19 patients. Lymphocytes are a type of white blood cell that the body uses to fight viral infections. 

A study published in Cellular and Molecular Immunology of the journal Nature showed a laboratory experiment wherein the SARS-CoV-2 virus was introduced to the T-lymphocytes or T-cells.

The results showed that SARS-CoV-2 could enter T-cells using its spikes.  The spikes on coronaviruses are on the surface. When viewed using an electron microscope, the viruses look like they are wearing a crown. That gives it the name coronavirus.

Once the SARS-CoV-2 enters the T-cells, the T-cells die with the virus and lowers the number of T-cells. This significantly decreases the body’s ability to fight infections.

There are many kinds of T-cells. The CD8+ T-cells kill virus-infected cells. The CD4+ T- cells coordinate the immune response to an infection. Regulatory T-cells protect healthy cells by directing the immune system to attack only the threat. This prevents “friendly fire” from happening and lessens collateral damage as the body fight infections.

The overall effect of low T-cells in Covid-19 contributes to the prolonged illness in some patients and, at the same time, causes damage and failure to several organs.

The inability of the Covid-19 patient to fight an infection may provide answers to the following:

Question: Why do some patients return to the hospital sicker after they were discharged?

Answer: The weakened immune response in some patients cannot eradicate the viruses. After several days of viral multiplication, the patients get sick again.

Q: How come a Covid-19 patient can still be infectious after they are recovered from the disease? 

A: The criteria for discharge are the absence of Covid-19 symptoms and a negative test for the virus from the samples obtained from the inside of the nose. However, the Covid-19 germs may still be lingering in the internal organs where they could not be detected. In small amounts, they cannot cause any symptoms. In the absence of a healthy immune system, like when the T-cells are low, the viruses continue to multiply, travel in the blood, and reinfect the nose and the rest of the respiratory tract.

Many questions remain unanswered.  Hopefully, they will be answered with future researches.

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Stay safe. Wear a mask, Wash your hands regularly, and social distance.

Don’t Get Sick!

Related readings:

1. Human Organs Targeted by Covid-19 Physician Deaths from Covid-19

2. Why Scheduled Surgery Has to Wait in Covid-19

3. What Happens to Critically-ill Covid-19 patients?

4. The Covid-19 can Attack the Brain.

5. Who Gets Cardiac Injury in Covid-19?

6. Can’t Smell and Taste Suddenly? It Can be Covid-19!

7. Not enough U.S. hospital beds, one Covid-19 epidemic is full-blown.

8. Lessons Learned from 72,314 COVID-19 Patients: A China CDC Study

9. Covid-19 Can Lead to Heart Failure

10. Who Dies From the Coronavirus?

Reference:

Wang, X., Xu, W., Hu, G. et al. SARS-CoV-2 infects T lymphocytes through its spike protein-mediated membrane fusion. Cell Mol Immunol (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41423-020-0424-9

Image Credit: T lymphocyte: By NIAID/NIH – NIAID Flickr’s photostream, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18233598

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