The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 directly infects fat cells and specific immune cells found in fat tissue, sparking inflammation that can then spread to uninfected "bystander" cells nearby.
In a study, published Sept. 22 in the journal Science Translational Medicine(opens in new tab), scientists experimented with fat tissue obtained from patients undergoing bariatric, heart and chest surgeries, to see if the tissue could be infected by the coronavirus. They found that the virus could infect and replicate within mature fat cells, known as adipocytes, and these infected cells became inflamed. They also found that specific subsets of immune cells housed within the fat tissue, called macrophages, also became infected and kicked off a much more intense inflammatory response.
