Scientists have discovered that coronavirus can attack the immune system like HIV

An international team of researchers has found that Covid-19 can destroy human immunity by attacking T cells like HIV.

T lymphocytes, or T cells, play a key role inidentification and elimination of pathogenic microorganisms. Having discovered an infected cell, they punch a hole in its protective membrane and inject toxic chemicals that destroy the infected cell along with the virus.

Studying the behavior of the coronavirus, a group of scientists from China and the USA discovered that it has a unique protein structure thatallows him to destroy T cells. Experiments have shown that Covid-19 is able to attach to the membrane of the cells of the immune system and introduce its own genes into them, effectively deactivating them.

Experiments with other strains of coronavirus, such as Sars, which killed hundreds of people in 2003, did not reveal such a feature.

According to doctors, the behavior of Covid-19 resembleshuman immunodeficiency virus and Ebola fever, which also gradually destroy human immunity, increasing the likelihood of death. However, unlike HIV, when it penetrates T-lymphocytes, the coronavirus does not make farms out of them to create new copies of itself, but dies along with them.

These studies have raised new questions about whetherwhy in some patients the coronavirus can exist for weeks without any symptoms, how it activates and interacts with T cells, and also why in some patients the immune system began to react excessively and attack healthy cells of the body. The group plans to learn about this from their further experiments.

Recall that recently the world's most powerful supercomputer has identified 77 substances that can stop the coronavirus.

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