#lymphoid — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #lymphoid, aggregated by home.social.
-
A particular focus is #lymphoid tissues that produce, store and carry #Tcells that fight infection, and #antibody-making #Bcells.
The coronavirus may also be hiding out in long-lived #nerve cells and #heart muscle, where it may drive chest #pain, brain fog, #fatigue and other long-Covid symptoms, said Diane Griffin, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore who has studied the body’s response to viral infections for more than 50 years.
“We have pretty good information from acute #RNA #virus infections that RNA does persist and that it does have consequences,” said Griffin, who is vice president of the US National Academy of Sciences. “Basically, it’s hard to get rid of viruses.”
Proving that persistent viral #infection causes long Covid will be difficult, Griffin said. Viruses in stealth mode suppress replication to avoid harming their host cells.
Despite extensive distribution of coronavirus RNA throughout patients’ bodies, Chertow’s team saw little evidence of inflammation or that the immune system had tried to destroy infected cells outside the respiratory tract.
(4/n)