ACS Chem Neurosci . Seeding Brain Protein Aggregation by SARS-CoV-2 as a Possible Long-Term Complication of COVID-19 Infection

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ACS Chem Neurosci


. 2020 Nov 4.
doi: 10.1021/acschemneuro.0c00676. Online ahead of print.
Seeding Brain Protein Aggregation by SARS-CoV-2 as a Possible Long-Term Complication of COVID-19 Infection


Omid Tavassoly ¹ , Farinaz Safavi ² , Iman Tavassoly ³



Affiliations

• PMID: 33147014
• DOI: 10.1021/acschemneuro.0c00676

Abstract

Postinfection complications of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are still unknown, and one of the long-term concerns in infected people are brain pathologies. The question is that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection may be an environmental factor in accelerating the sporadic neurodegeneration in the infected population. In this regard, induction of protein aggregation in the brain by SARS-CoV-2 intact structure or a peptide derived from spike protein subunits needs to be considered in futures studies. In this paper, we discuss these possibilities using pieces of evidence from other viruses.

Keywords: Brain; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; functional amyloids; neurodegeneration; protein aggregation.