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Detection of blood–brain barrier disruption in brains of patients with COVID-19, but no evidence of brain penetration by SARS-CoV-2

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Data and materials availability

All data are available in the main text and the supplementary materials.

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Acknowledgements

Here, we thank the NINDS/ NIA-supported Center Without Walls, CONNECT-TBI, and Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) for providing the brain tissue sections, particularly Aimee M. Schantz, John Campos, Theresa Schuck, and John L. Robinson for their coordination. We acknowledge the Penn Tumor Tissue and Biospecimen Bank for providing the lung tissue sections. We also appreciate Comparative Pathology Core at University of Pennsylvania and particularly Dr. Charles-Antoine Assenmacher for helping with whole slide scanning using Aperio VERSA 200 platform.

Funding

This research was made available with the following support from National Institutes of Health grant U54NS115322 (DHS and WS), National Institutes of Aging grants U19AG062418 (Virginia M.-Y. Lee), P30AG072979 (EBL) and P01AG066597 (EBL), and Nancy and Buster Alvord Endowment (CDK). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Center for Brain Injury and Repair, University of Pennsylvania, 3320 Smith Walk, 105 Hayden Hall, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Hailong Song, Alexandra Tomasevich, Jean-Pierre Dolle, Victoria E. Johnson & Douglas H. Smith

  2. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Kofi K. Acheampong & Sydney M. Shaffer

  3. Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Dylan L. Schaff & Sydney M. Shaffer

  4. Translational Neuropathology Research Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Bailey Mikytuck & Edward B. Lee

  5. Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA

    Amber Nolan & C. Dirk Keene

  6. Department of Microbiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Susan R. Weiss

  7. Penn Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Susan R. Weiss

  8. School of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G51 4TF, UK

    William Stewart

  9. Department of Neuropathology, Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK

    William Stewart

Authors
  1. Hailong Song
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  2. Alexandra Tomasevich
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  3. Kofi K. Acheampong
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  4. Dylan L. Schaff
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  5. Sydney M. Shaffer
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  6. Jean-Pierre Dolle
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  7. Victoria E. Johnson
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  8. Bailey Mikytuck
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  9. Edward B. Lee
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  10. Amber Nolan
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  11. C. Dirk Keene
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  12. Susan R. Weiss
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  13. William Stewart
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  14. Douglas H. Smith
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Contributions

Each author’s contributions to the paper are listed. Conceptualization: HS, DHS. Methodology: HS, AT, KKA, DLS, SMS, JPD, VEJ, BM, EBL, AN, CDK, WS, DHS. Investigation: HS, KKA, DLS, DHS. Visualization: HS, DLS. Funding acquisition: WS, DHS. Supervision: HS, SMS, JPD, VEJ, EBL, CDK, SRW, WS, DHS. Writing—original draft: HS, DHS. Writing—review and editing: HS, WS, DHS.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Douglas H. Smith.

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Conflict of interest

EBL is the member of the Editorial Board for Acta Neuropathologica, but was not involved in the editorial handling of this article. Other authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. For this type of study formal consent is not required. Tissue was obtained from the following Institutions: University of Washington, University of Glasgow, and University of Pennsylvania. Tissue was acquired at routine diagnostic autopsy, and approval for its use was granted by the respective institutional review boards.

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Song, H., Tomasevich, A., Acheampong, K.K. et al. Detection of blood–brain barrier disruption in brains of patients with COVID-19, but no evidence of brain penetration by SARS-CoV-2. Acta Neuropathol 146, 771–775 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00401-023-02624-7

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