SARS-CoV-2 Infects the Intestines, Kidneys, and Other Organs

On Wednesday, researchers reported that COVID-19 infects other organs of the body such as the throat, lungs, brain, heart, liver, the intestines, and kidneys. 

Two separate reports show that apart from the lungs, the virus also attacks the different body organs, which can help explain the many symptoms being experienced by people being infected with the disease. 

(Photo: unsplash/Fusion Medical Animation)
SARS-CoV-2 infects the intestines, kidneys, heart, lungs, pharynx, brain, and liver.

COVID-19 Questionable Symptoms Explained

Some of the vague symptoms seen in COVID-19 patients may now be explained in the study results. Some patients experienced blood clots that lead to strokes in young people and others, causing the clogging of dialysis machines, headaches, and kidney failures. 

A respiratory virus causes COVID-19 so that it can be passed on to another person via respiratory droplets, but sometimes it causes diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems. Some research has found that the virus is detected in stools of infected people, so they are warning the public that it may also be transmitted through the oral-fecal route. 

SARS-CoV-2 Thrived in the Intestines

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong, Jie Zhou, and colleagues studied how well the virus can flourish in the intestines. They grew intestinal organoids (organ grown in lab dishes) from both bats and people and found that the virus survived in the organoids, but they even replicated. 

(Photo: unsplash/CDC)
Researchers grew intestinal organoids in lab dishes to test if the SARS-CoV-2 would thrive in the organs.

The team wrote in their report published in Nature Medicine that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted via the human intestines. 

SARS-CoV-2 Detected in Stools

The same group of researchers also found that the virus can also infect the cells in stool. Zhou wrote that a 68-year-old female patient had symptoms such as fever, sore throat, and productive cough then, later on, she developed diarrhea after being admitted to Princess Margaret Hospital. Zhou and the team isolated the virus from her stool specimen. 

The researchers would like to demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 actively replicates in human intestinal organoids and could be isolated from the stool specimen of a patient that has diarrheal COVID-19. 

SARS-CoV-2 Found in Other Organs

A team performed autopsies on 27 patients who died after contracting SARS-CoV-2 at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany and found the virus in various organs of the bodies. 

The researchers wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that the virus could be found in the body's multiple organs, such as the lungs, heart, liver, pharynx, brain, and kidneys. They also wrote that the virus seemed to do well in kidneys, which could be why there is a high rate of kidney injury experienced by COVID-19 patients. 

Adding to that, the researchers said that since the virus could attack the different organs, it might aggravate pre-existing conditions. Hence, people with heart and kidney diseases, and those with diabetes are especially vulnerable to the new coronavirus.