Interesting Article pointing out similarities betw

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Lu Lu, from Fudan University in Shanghai, and Jang Shibo, from the New York Blood Centre, joined the living virus, which is officially known as Sars-CoV-2, to laboratory-grown T lymphocyte cell lines.
T lymphocytes, also known as T cells, play a central role in identifying and eliminating alien invaders in the body.

They do this by capturing a cell infected by a virus, boring a hole in its membrane and injecting toxic chemicals into the cell. These chemicals then kill both the virus and infected cell and tear them to pieces.

To the surprise of the scientists, the T cell became a prey to the coronavirus in their experiment. They found a unique structure in the virus’ spike protein that apparently triggered the fusion of a viral envelope and cell membrane when they came into contact.

The virus’s genes then entered the T cell and took it hostage, disabling its function of protecting humans.

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The researchers did the same experiment with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, another coronavirus, and found that the Sars virus did not have the ability to infect T cells.

The reason, they suspected, was the lack of a membrane fusion function. Sars, which killed hundreds in a 2003 outbreak, can only infect cells carrying a specific receptor protein known as ACE2, and this protein has an extremely low presence in T cells.

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Further investigations into the coronavirus infection on primary T cells would evoke “new ideas about pathogenic mechanisms and therapeutic interventions”, the researchers said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology this week.

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A doctor who works in a public hospital treating Covid-19 patients in Beijing said the discovery added another piece of evidence to a growing concern in medical circles that the coronavirus could sometimes behave like some of the most notorious viruses that directly attack the human immune system .

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“More and more people compare it to HIV,” said the doctor who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
In February, Chen Yongwen and his colleagues at the PLA’s Institute of Immunology released a clinical report warning that the number of T cells could drop significantly in Covid-19 patients , especially when they were elderly or required treatment in intensive care units. The lower the T cell count, the higher the risk of death.

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