{"id":23070,"date":"2020-08-02T17:18:14","date_gmt":"2020-08-02T21:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=23070"},"modified":"2020-08-02T17:19:54","modified_gmt":"2020-08-02T21:19:54","slug":"it-looks-like-the-novel-coronavirus-is-more-than-a-respiratory-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=23070","title":{"rendered":"It looks like the novel coronavirus is much more than a respiratory virus."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We Thought It Was Just a Respiratory Virus<\/h1>\n

We were wrong.<\/p>\n

By Ariel Bleicher and Katherine Conrad
\nUCSF Magazine<\/p>\n

\n

In late January, when hospitals in the United States confirmed the presence of the novel coronavirus, health workers knew to watch for precisely three symptoms: fever<\/span>, cough<\/span>, and shortness of breath<\/span>. But as the number of infections climbed, the symptom list began to grow. Some patients lost their sense of smell<\/span> and taste<\/span>. Some had nausea<\/span> or diarrhea<\/span>. Some had arrhythmias<\/span> or even heart attacks<\/span>. Some had damaged kidneys<\/span> or livers<\/span>. Some had headaches<\/span>, blood clots<\/span>, rashes<\/span>, swelling<\/span>, or strokes<\/span>. Many had no symptoms at all<\/span>.<\/p>\n

By June, clinicians were swapping journal papers, news stories, and tweets describing more than three dozen ways that COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes, appears to manifest itself. Now researchers at UC San Francisco and around the world have begun taking a closer look at this dizzying array of symptoms to get at the disease\u2019s root causes. They are learning from people inside the hospital and out; people on the brink of death and only mildly sick; people newly exposed and recovered; people young and old, Black, brown, and white. And they are beginning to piece together the story of a virus unlike any known before.<\/p>\n

How infection sets in<\/h2>\n

Viruses lead a curious purgatorial existence of being neither fully alive nor dead. Enveloped in a protein cloak, a virus consists almost entirely of genetic material \u2013 DNA or RNA, the blueprints for all of life. But it can\u2019t reproduce on its own. To survive, it must break into a cell and co-opt the cell\u2019s gene-copying machinery.<\/p>\n

The novel coronavirus, an RNA virus named SARS-CoV-2, has become notorious for its skill at breaking and entering human cells. Its tools of choice are the protein spikes protruding from its surface \u2013 a feature that distinguishes all coronaviruses. The spikes of SARS-CoV-2 are the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me: By the luck of the evolutionary draw, they are able to easily grab hold of protein gates on human cells known as ACE2 receptors and, like jackknives, pry these gates open.<\/p>\n