SARS-CoV-2 RNA survives in the human brain and multiple organs for up to 230 days after the first symptoms appear.
Covid-19 was long considered a respiratory infection that the body clears after a few weeks of illness. Autopsies now reveal that the virus actually migrates throughout the entire body and parks itself in tissues for over seven months. These viral remnants were found in patients who only had mild symptoms and never went to the hospital. The long-term presence of this genetic material suggests the body is never truly finished with the virus even after a negative test. This provides a concrete biological explanation for why some people suffer from brain fog and fatigue for years.
SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistence throughout the human body and brain
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Abstract COVID-19 is known to cause multi-organ dysfunction 1-3 in acute infection, with prolonged symptoms experienced by some patients, termed Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC) 4-5 . However, the burden of infection outside the respiratory tract and time to viral clearance is not well characterized, particularly in the brain 3,6-14 . We performed complete autopsies on 44 patients with COVID-19 to map and quantify SARS-CoV-2 distribution, replication, and cell-type specificity across the