Embryos Could Be Susceptible to Coronavirus, Study Suggests

Embryos could be susceptible to coronavirus study suggests.
Likely impacts on fetal wellbeing and successful pregnancy for those contaminated with SARS Co V 2 remain to a great extent unanswered.

Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, who holds positions at both the University of Cambridge and Caltech, said: “Our work suggests that the human embryo could be susceptible to COVID-19 as early as the second week of pregnancy if the mother gets sick. “To know whether this really could happen, it now becomes very important to know whether the ACE2 and TMPRSS2 proteins are made and become correctly positioned at cell surfaces. If these next steps are also taking place, it is possible that the virus could be transmitted from the mother and infect the embryo’s cells.”[…]

Who, What, Where, How, Why

To look at the dangers, a group of specialists at the University of Cambridge to culture human embryos through the stage they regularly embed inside the body of the mother to appear at the expression of key genes inside the undeveloped organism.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found that qualities of the genes that are thought to be responsible in how the SARS Co V 2 infection contaminates human cells are found in embryos as early as the seventh day of pregnancy.



The scientists state this may mean embryos are defenseless against COVID 19 if the mother becomes ill, conceivably influencing the probabilities of a successful pregnancy.

Original story from the University of Cambridge

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Reference: Weatherbee, B. A., Glover, D. M., & Zernicka-Goetz, M. (2020). Expression of SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 and the protease TMPRSS2 suggests susceptibility of the human embryo in the first trimester. Open Biology, 10(8), 200162. doi:10.1098/rsob.200162