“SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) penetrates the cell by adhering with its S (spike) protein to a protein on the membrane called the ACE receptor (angiotensin-converting enzyme). A large amount of the ACE receptor is found in the white “Blood cells are leukocytes, that is, the cells of the immune system. Therefore, the coronavirus damages the immune system and reduces the immune response,” allergist-immunologist Vladimir Bolibok told Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Furthermore, according to the doctor, the immune system has “memory cells”, resting cells that are in a kind of suspended animation and, if infected, do not reproduce any virus. This applies not only to the coronavirus, but also, for example, to the AIDS virus, which hides from the immune system and medications, even in immune memory cells. “After a while, perhaps after a few months, or even years, the immune memory cells are activated, but at the same time the “sleeping” viruses are activated in them and a relapse of the infection occurs,” explains Vladimir Bolibok. .
Immune memory cells are stored in lymphoid tissue (e.g., lymph nodes, tonsils, adenoids), spleen, and bone marrow. Inside the brain there are also long-lived, autonomous immune system cells, in which a variety of viruses can also hide.
“But it is possible that the coronavirus also uses other long-lived cells from other tissues, for example, fibroblasts or cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells), whose life expectancy reaches 20 years,” added the immunologist.
In his opinion, in the future part of scientific research will focus on the problem of “long Covid”.
Previously, the head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, said that doctors are increasingly inclined to believe that the coronavirus does not completely leave the body after Covid, but can remain in it and continue to cause harm.
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