Research team discovers molecular processes in kidney cells that attract and feed COVID-19

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Northerner

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Although the lungs are a common target for COVID-19's cytokine storm, so are the kidneys, making the 1 in 4 U.S. adults with diabetes resulting in diabetic kidney disease at increased risk for virus mortality.

But why are the kidneys so attractive to the coronavirus?

Recently published in Kidney International, a national research team made up of kidney clinicians, bioinformaticians, a molecular biologist, pathologist and virologist found that a protein on the surface of some kidney cells, called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), is the primary COVID-19 entry receptor and aids in the activation of its uncontrolled immune response.
It also is responsible for the virus' duplication, leaving patients sicker, longer.

 
You can’t feed a virus. It is metabolically inert until it enters a cell with a nucleus. So the headline is not only ludicrous, it is deliberately misleading.

It’s also not news that viruses like particular cells - the chicken pox virus prefers nerve root cells, for example, so that it can reappear as shingles years later. And you can’t stop it doing that.

So while this is interesting, it’s of no help in developing any form of treatment or management.
 
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