Anthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023

Yet another piece of evidence that SARS Cov 2 is infecting Children's lymphoid tissue and their T cells in their tonsils.

25% of kids were positive despite no respiratory symptoms

The virus has a tropism for the lymphatics and T cells, and is persistent
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.21.23284592v1

Show threadAnthony J Leonardi
"The infection of CD8+T lymphocytes by viruses is surprising, considering that these are the very cells that perform cytotoxicity of virus-infected cells, and thus are central in the combat of viral infections."
Jan 26, 2023 at 1:31pmWeb
Show threadAnthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023
"It is noteworthy that two of twelve SARS-CoV-2-positive children had a previous laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, dating back three and five months prior to tonsillectomy, indicating that they had prolonged or persisting SARSCoV-2 infection."
Show threadAnthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023
"In further support of SARS-CoV-2 prolonged or persisting infection in tonsils, rather than reinfection, all five children who were seropositive for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 at the time of tonsillectomy in the present cohort lacked IgM antibodies."
Show threadAnthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023
"Such smoldering SARS-CoV-2 infection might involve continuous low-level production of viral proteins and cell-to cell transmission, which circumvent immune surveillance and subvert sterilizing
immunity by low virus replication and possibly antigenic variation."
Show threadAnthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023
What concerns me is how it is able to broadly activate lymphocytes despite supposedly not having a superantigen. Let me make a point, despite people claiming it has no superantigenic activity, an antibody against SEB superantigen can prevent infection https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8082696/
A monoclonal antibody against staphylococcal enterotoxin B superantigen inhibits SARS-CoV-2 entry in vitro

We recently discovered a superantigen-like motif sequentially and structurally similar to a staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB) segment, near the S1/S2 cleavage site of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which might explain the multisystem inflammatory syndrome ...

PubMed Central (PMC)
Show threadAnthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023

For the virus to have the ability to be neutralized by an antibody specific to superantigen but not have superantigenic activity is very strange, and I cannot think of what the chances in nature of that could be

Some virrology work may be flawed

https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1614672211180150790

Jeremy Kamil @[email protected] on Twitter

“@DE2344 @fitterhappierAJ Just for reference. AJ has been in large part an imposter and a charlatan on COVID immunology. Sorry you’ve been duped. For example. https://t.co/4IOvpLl3cm”

Twitter
Show threadAnthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023
Previously, virologists have maintained that T cells are not being infected by SARS Cov 2, but we reached out to the researchers at WIV and they confirmed infection of lymphocytes by SARS Cov 2 and the experimental parameters https://twitter.com/fitterhappierAJ/status/1545442367238447113
Anthony J Leonardi, PhD, MS on Twitter

“@stuartjdneil @MelpomeneMel Are you suggesting shi’s work is not reproducible? Would like to know @PeterDaszak opinion on the work”

Twitter
Show threadAnthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023
I do believe that our misassessment of SARS Cov 2's tropism for lymphoid tissue and T cells is causing us to not fully appreciate the long term risks of sars cov 2, especially in terms of lymphocyte activation and sloughing. The authors have also mentioned that here.
Show threadAnthony J LeonardiJan 26, 2023

People are trying to cast doubt on the findings.

Several published articles have found cov2 RNA in T cells in tonsils and in patients

Here is another published paper with the finding with RNA, not images
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1808869422001392