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The Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus does not only cause infections of the respiratory tract. Other organ systems, such as the nervous system, can also be affected.
In fact, Sars-CoV-2 mRNA has been detected in the brain in autopsies of patients who died from Covid-19. There is also growing evidence that coronaviruses can enter the retina of the eye, yet it is unclear which retinal structures are infected by Sars-CoV-2 and whether the retinal pathologies identified in Covid-19 patients are a direct or indirect result of retinal infection.
A collaborative team of researchers led by Thomas Rauen and Hans Schöler of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and virologist Stephan Ludwig of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster has now decided to utilize organoids – an organ-like model system – of the retina from human reprogrammed stem cells to study Sars-CoV-2 infection of the retina.
According to the study, Sars-CoV-2 actually infects retinal cells, especially retinal ganglion cells, but also light-sensitive cells. Furthermore, the researchers show that coronaviruses can also replicate in these cell types. This finding is new and underlines the need to monitor retinal pathologies as a possible consequence of ‘Long Covid’.
