Instituto de Parasitología y Biomedicina López-Neyra, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IPBLN, CSIC), Granada, Spain.
Division of Virology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Front Immunol. 2023 Mar 13;14:1120298. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1120298. eCollection 2023.
The co-occurrence and the similarities between malaria and COVID-19 diseases raise the question of whether SARS-CoV-2 is capable of infecting red blood cells and, if so, whether these cells represent a competent niche for the virus. In this study, we first tested whether CD147 functions as an alternative receptor of SARS-CoV-2 to infect host cells. Our results show that transient expression of ACE2 but not CD147 in HEK293T allows SARS-CoV-2 pseudoviruses entry and infection. Secondly, using a SARS-CoV-2 wild type virus isolate we tested whether the new coronavirus could bind and enter erythrocytes. Here, we report that 10,94% of red blood cells had SARS-CoV-2 bound to the membrane or inside the cell. Finally, we hypothesized that the presence of the malaria parasite, , could make erythrocytes more vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection due to red blood cell membrane remodelling. However, we found a low coinfection rate (9,13%), suggesting that would not facilitate the entry of SARS-CoV-2 virus into malaria-infected erythrocytes. Besides, the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in a blood culture did not affect the survival or growth rate of the malaria parasite. Our results are significant because they do not support the role of CD147 in SARS-CoV-2 infection, and indicate, that mature erythrocytes would not be an important reservoir for the virus in our body, although they can be transiently infected.
疟疾和 COVID-19 疾病的共同发生和相似之处引发了一个问题，即 SARS-CoV-2 是否能够感染红细胞，如果可以，这些细胞是否代表病毒的合适生态位。在这项研究中，我们首先测试了 CD147 是否作为 SARS-CoV-2 感染宿主细胞的替代受体发挥作用。我们的结果表明，在 HEK293T 中转染 ACE2 而非 CD147 可允许 SARS-CoV-2 假病毒进入和感染。其次，我们使用 SARS-CoV-2 野生型病毒分离株来测试新型冠状病毒是否能够结合并进入红细胞。在此，我们报告 10.94%的红细胞带有 SARS-CoV-2 结合在细胞膜上或细胞内。最后，我们假设疟原虫的存在可能会由于红细胞膜重塑而使红细胞更容易受到 SARS-CoV-2 感染。然而，我们发现低的共感染率（9.13%），这表明疟原虫不会促进 SARS-CoV-2 病毒进入感染疟原虫的红细胞。此外，SARS-CoV-2 在 血液培养物中的存在并不影响疟原虫的存活或生长速度。我们的研究结果意义重大，因为它们不支持 CD147 在 SARS-CoV-2 感染中的作用，并且表明成熟的红细胞在我们体内不会是病毒的重要储存库，尽管它们可能会被短暂感染。
