Mind-blowing discovery if confirmed: viruses hiding inside gut bacteria as phages

An article that came out this month (by a serious team, with open review, always an interesting read, f1000research -though it has one notorious reviewer) could change how we view viruses and how to fight them: Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 bacteriophage potential in human gut microbiota, by Mauro Petrillo, Maddalena Querci, Carlo Brogna, Ponti Jessica, Simone Cristoni, Peter Markov, Andrea Valsesia, Gabriele Leoni, Alessandro Benedetti, Thierry Wiss, Guy Van den Eede, reports that "SARS-CoV-2 may act as a bacteriophage when interacting with at least two bacterial species known to be present in the human microbiota." Using "immuno-labeling with Anti-SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein antibody", they show the "presence of SARS-CoV-2 both outside and inside bacteria. De novo synthesis of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was observed, as evidence that SARS-CoV-2 RNA is translated in the bacterial cultures."

As the authors state, "If the hypothesis proposed, i.e., that under certain conditions SARS-CoV-2 may multiply at the expense of human gut bacteria, is further substantiated, it would drastically change the model of acting and infecting of SARS-CoV-2, and most likely that of other human pathogenic viruses."

Carlo Brogna's work has been focusing on the importance of the gut microbiome in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 since 2020.

What could the consequences be?

➡️ The virus does not just infect human eukaryotic cells: it can also infect gut bacteria, and we have a lot of them. That's a very different cycle than the one assumed about viruses. Huge implications for modeling viral load, virus evolution, dormant viruses, etc.

➡️ It also means that a recovered COVID patient could be "re-infected" without any new exposure: the virus is still there, lurking inside bacteria.

➡️ If the virus (and possibly other viruses) use bacteria to persist, antibiotic treatment, at the beginning of the infection to slow down replication and after recovery to prevent the virus from re-emerging, could be game-changers. Brogna's retrospective study of antibiotic use in COVID cases is an intriguing signal (Brogna C, Montano L, Zanolin ME, et al. A retrospective cohort study on early antibiotic use in vaccinated and unvaccinated COVID-19 patients. J Med Virol. 2024; 96:e29507).

In other words, the study upends a lot of knowledge about how viruses work. The findings need to be confirmed by others. Looking at other re-occurring viruses might also come with some surprises.

In the eight years leading up to a dementia diagnosis, the median U.S. household net worth drops to less than half that of households without dementia: $104,000, compared with $217,000.

A short article by MIT AgeLab's Dr. Joe Coughlin and Luke Yoquinto (link) summarizes the results of a 2023 study (Declines in Wealth Among US Older Adults at Risk of Dementia, link), with the stunning observation that major financial losses happen in the 8 years before a dementia diagnosis -and of course after as well, but that is more expected.

Financial mismanagement, missed payments, susceptibility to fraud and exploitation, and other warning signs are major drivers of these financial losses. They could also be used as predictive behavioral markers to promote earlier diagnosis with the right alert systems in place.

It is also a reminder that brain health is something to cherish, a priority in the quest for increased healthspan.