Visceral fat cells infection may lead to severe Covid-19

Dec, 2022 - By WMR

Experiments show that visceral fat cell infection contributes towards severity in COVID-19.

Visceral fat is stored behind the abdominal muscles and surrounds our vital organs like stomach, liver, intestines etc. This fat is considered a risk factor for high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Now, experiments show visceral fat causes more severe Covid-19 too.

Researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) and the State University of Campinas conducted experiments in Brazil. Marcelo Mori, one of the leaders of the team of researchers and a professor at the Institute of Biology at the State University of Campinas, infected two different types of fat cells in the lab. Out of these two fat cells one was acquired from human stem cells differentiated from subcutaneous tissue and the other isolated from stem cells obtained from visceral fatty tissue. As per Mori, they observed that visceral adipocytes are more vulnerable to infection by Covid-19. He believes, this is due to the presence of higher quantity of the protein named ACE-2 on the surface of the cell

In July 2020, Mori’s team at the State University of Campinas was the first to show the world that human fat cells can be infected by SARS-CoV-2. They were the first as well to suggest that, for the virus, adipose tissue functions as a reservoir. Evidence in the scientific literature shows that in case of metabolic diseases visceral fat is the main culprit. As per Mori, they wanted to check if this was similar in the case of COVID-19. In a study they found that the ancestral strain is more effective at infecting visceral fat cells than the later ones. A recent research shows the downward trend in the number of severe cases of COVID-19 due to new variants among obese people. But, according to Mori, this could be because either the people with obesity may have been taking extra care as they knew they belonged to a high-risk group or because of other reasons like vaccination or earlier infection.