As cases of coronavirus infection proliferate around the world and governments take extraordinary measures to limit the spread, there is still a lot of confusion about what exactly the virus does to people’s bodies. A team of researchers at CSIR, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB), Kolkata has explored the neuro-invasive potential of COVID-19 and suggested that the virus may infect the respiratory centre of the brain.
The paper published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience and supported by Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), a statutory body of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), implies that coronavirus could enter the human brain through the nose and reach the olfactory bulb of the brain. From there, the virus might infect PreBotzinger complex (PBC), the primary centre of the brain that controls the respiratory rhythm generation. This explains that the collapse of the respiratory centre in the brain may be responsible for the breakdown of COVID-19 patients.
The team of researchers comprising Dr Prem Tripathi, Dr Upasana Ray, Dr Amit Srivastava and Dr Sonu Gandhi suggested that while the lung is one of the most infected organs, several other organs, including the brain, are also affected by COVID-19. This is the first report that highlights that SARS-CoV-2 may target the PBC of the brainstem that controls respiration and causes a respiratory collapse of COVID-19 patients, the statement added.
Another recent study from a group of scientists at King’s College London, UK had observed that loss of smell was one of the main symptoms of COVID-19 patients, hinting at the involvement of the same route through which coronavirus may enter the brain.
