COVID-19 increases fat in our body’s cells to help promote viral entry, study finds | Science & Technology News
New research shows that COVID-19 increases the fat of our body’s cells to help promote viral entry, with some fats increasing to 64 times their normal levels, study finds. just showed.
Scientists say the virus causes COVID-19 takes on a massive takeover of the body’s fat-processing system, creating fat stores in its cells that allow it to hijack the body’s molecular machinery and cause disease.
With that in mind, they tried using diet pills and other fat-burning compounds to try to block the virus in cell cultures.
Removed from its fatty fuel source, the virus stops replicating within 48 hours, according to research published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
New research comes out as infections on the rise in all four UK countrieswith about 1.7 million people infected with the virus last week.
“It’s an exciting job, but it’s a job,” said Fikadu Tafesse, the study’s corresponding author and assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Oregon Health & Science University. The beginning of a very long journey.
“We have an interesting observation, but we still have a lot to learn about the mechanism of this disease.”
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The scientists involved in the study warn that the results with the weight-loss drug are in cell cultures, not in humans.
The team embarked on the study based on the observation that people with a high body mass index (BMI) and conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes are more susceptible to COVID-19.
They studied the effects of SARS-CoV-2 on more than 400 lipids (fats are a subtype of lipids) in two different human cell lines.
The scientists found a large variation in lipid levels, with some lipids increasing 64 times.
In one cell line, nearly 80% of the fat was altered by the virus; meanwhile, other levels of more than half have been changed.
