Is the novel Coronavirus a Blood Vessel Disease?

It is unusual and uncommon that COVID-19 a respiratory virus is infecting the blood cells which are circulating through the body!

According to a study, COVID-19 may not be a respiratory disease and this research could alter the outlook towards understanding the virus. Rather, it might be deteriorating endothelial cells, attacking the blood vessels.

 During April, blood clots appeared as strange symptoms for Covid-19. This virus had at first been thought to mainly affect the lungs in the form of pneumonia. After a few days, the news came up with young individuals dying of strokes because of new coronavirus.

After months of research on COVID-19 cases, there are proofs to hold up a theory that the novel coronavirus can infect blood vessels, which could elaborate not only on the high chances of increased blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks but also gives an explanation for the head-to-toe symptoms.

“All these Covid-associated complications were a mystery. We see blood clotting, we see kidney damage, we see inflammation of the heart, we see stroke, we see encephalitis [swelling of the brain],” says William Li, MD, president of the Angiogenesis Foundation. “A whole myriad of seemingly unconnected phenomena that you do not normally see with SARS or H1N1 or, frankly, most infectious diseases.”

COVID-19 is believed to come into the body through ACE2 receptors existing on the surface of cells that enter through the respiratory area in the nose and throat. After entering the lungs, the virus seems to go from the alveoli, which are air sacs in the lung, and then into the blood vessels.

“[The virus] enters the lung, it destroys the lung tissue, and people start coughing. The destruction of the lung tissue breaks open some blood vessels,” says Mandeep Mehra, MD, medical director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Heart and Vascular Center. “Then it starts to infect endothelial cell after endothelial cell, creates a local immune response, and inflames the endothelium.”

Such type of virus which affects the blood cells circulating through the body is very unusual.

The impairment of Endothelial could elaborate on the virus mysterious symptoms

An infection of the blood vessels would describe many of the strange inclinations of the COVID-19. Endothelial cells prevent clotting and help to make certain that blood flows smoothly.

Mehra says, “What we’re saying is that maybe the best antiviral therapy is not actually an antiviral therapy. The best therapy might actually be a drug that stabilizes the vascular endothelial. We’re building a drastically different concept.”

“Endothelial cells connect the entire circulation [system], 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels throughout our body,” says Li. “Is this one way that Covid-19 can impact the brain, the heart, the Covid toe? Does SARS-CoV-2 traffic itself through the endothelial cells or get into the bloodstream this way? We don’t know the answer to that.” Says Li