Nikhil Prasad Fact checked by:Thailand Medical News Team Dec 08, 2025 44 minutes ago
Medical News: Study Proves Blood Vessel Cells Are Unlikely Direct Targets of COVID-19
A groundbreaking study by researchers from Imperial College London and the University of California, San Francisco, has revealed that human endothelial cells, which line the inside of blood vessels, are highly resistant to infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in lab conditions. This discovery helps clarify a long-standing debate about whether COVID-19 directly infects these vascular cells or whether the vascular damage seen in patients is caused by other indirect mechanisms.
Study confirms SARS-CoV-2 does not infect blood vessel cells directly
Why This Matters
COVID-19 has been linked to serious vascular problems such as blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks. These issues led scientists to wonder whether the virus was infecting the endothelial cells themselves. To test this, researchers studied endothelial cells taken from the lungs, aorta, and blood vessels and exposed them to live SARS-CoV-2 virus, different strains including B.1.1.7, and even virus-mimicking pseudoviruses. They also examined human lung slices to assess infection in a real-tissue environment.
Key Findings from the Lab
The endothelial cells tested showed very low levels of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 — the two main proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells. Unlike nasal cells which became infected and produced large amounts of virus, the endothelial cells remained uninfected, even when exposed to inflammation-promoting signals like IL-1β. Interestingly, these same cells could be infected by other viruses like Ebola and vesicular stomatitis virus, proving that they are not generally resistant to all viruses — just to SARS-CoV-2.
In this
Medical News report, it was confirmed that pseudoviruses bearing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein could not enter endothelial cells, while pseudoviruses bearing Ebola or VSV proteins could. Even high expression of an alternative receptor candidate called BSG (CD147) failed to enable SARS-CoV-2 entry into these cells. This strongly argues against the idea that BSG allows the virus to infect endothelial cells.
Real Human Tissue Confirms the Resistance
To validate these lab results, the team used publicly available single-cell RNA sequencing data from lung slice experiments. These samples showed that endothelial cells in human lungs almost never contained SARS-CoV-2 RNA, while macrophages and epithelial cells did. This further reinforces the claim that vascular damage seen in COVID-19 is likely caused by indirect inflammatory responses, not direct viral invasion of blood vessel cells.
Conclusions and Implications
This study provides solid evidence that human endothelial cells are not directly infected by SARS-CoV-2. Instead, the damage to blood vessels seen in COVID-19 patients likely results from inflammation caused by infected nearby cells or immune responses. This understanding could reshape how we approach treatment for COVID-19 complications, focusing more o
n managing inflammation rather than targeting viral infection in blood vessels. This research may also help explain aspects of long COVID involving vascular symptoms.
The study findings were published in the peer reviewed Journal of Virology
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01205-25
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Read Also:
https://www.thailandmedical.news/articles/coronavirus
https://www.thailandmedical.news/articles/long-covid
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