⁍ Coronavirus damages the kidneys, liver, heart, brain and nervous system, skin and gastrointestinal tract.
⁍ Much of the damage wrought by the virus appears to come because of its affinity for a receptor called ACE2.
⁍ Cells lining the blood vessels, in the kidneys, the liver ducts, the pancreas, in the intestinal tract and lining the respiratory tract all are covered with ACE2 receptors.
– Coronavirus is “unusual and it’s hard not to take a step back and not be impressed by how many manifestations it has on the human body,” says one of the doctors who helped write a new study on the illness. The study, published in Nature Medicine, looked at the effects of the virus on the kidneys, liver, heart, brain, skin, and gastrointestinal tract and found that it damages not only the lungs, but also the kidneys, liver, heart, brain, and nervous system, the New York Times reports. “There’s a lot of news about purplish rashes, but it’s also important to understand that a substantial proportion of these patients suffer kidney, heart, and brain damage, and physicians need to treat those conditions along with the respiratory disease,” says one of the study’s authors, a cardiology fellow at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.