The SARS-CoV-2 virus can migrate within neurons and infect the brain

The emergence of different variants of SARS-CoV-2 has produced a wide range of clinical profiles and symptoms in patients. For the first time, researchers at the Institut Pasteur and Université Paris Cité have demonstrated, in an animal model, a characteristic common to several SARS-CoV-2 variants: the ability to infect the central nervous system. The study confirms that SARS-CoV-2 is capable of infecting human neurons in vitro and migrating into axons, the nerve cell projections that carry information. The results were published on July 26, 2023 in the journal Nature Communications. The neurological symptoms associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection have changed with the evolution of the virus and the emergence of new variants. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, anosmia was identified as one of the typical symptoms of infection, but it was less frequently associated with infections caused by the Omicron/BA.1 variant. Does this variability in symptoms indicate a greater or...