Spike protein changes found to help Coronavirus infect brain: Study

Changes in the spike protein enhanced the ability of the coronavirus to infect the brain, which could underlie the brain-related symptoms of the disease, including brain fog of long Covid, according to a new study.

The spike protein directs the virus, SARS-CoV-2, how to enter human cells before infecting them with COVID-19.

The exact causes of long Covid, which persists for months after the initial infection, and its brain-affecting symptoms are still not known and are being widely studied around the world.

The study could, therefore, help scientists understand these aspects better and may lead to specific treatments to protect and clear the virus from the brain, according to researchers at Northwestern University, UK, and the University of Illinois-Chicago, US.

For the study, published in the journal Nature Microbiology, the researchers infected mice with the coronavirus. As the virus multiplied itself within the host, the researchers compared the spike proteins of the viruses in