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Consistent with the biochemistry of coronaviruses as well established over decades, SARS-CoV-2 makes its initial attachment to host cells through the binding of its spike protein (SP) to sialylated glycans (containing the monosaccharide sialic acid) on the cell surface. The virus can then slide over and enter via ACE2. SARS-CoV-2 SP attaches particularly tightly to the trillions of red blood cells (RBCs), platelets and endothelial cells in the human body, each cell very densely coated with sialic acid surface molecules but having no ACE2 or minimal ACE2. These interlaced attachments trigger the blood cell aggregation, microvascular occlusion and vascular damage that underlie the hypox-ia, blood clotting and related morbidities of severe COVID-19. Notably, the two human betacoro-naviruses that express a sialic acid-cleaving enzyme are benign, while the other three—SARS, SARS-CoV-2 and MERS—are virulent. RBC aggregation experimentally induced in several animal species using an injected polysaccharide caused most of the same morbidities of severe COVID-19. This glycan biochemistry is key to disentangling controversies that have arisen over the efficacy of certain generic COVID-19 treatment agents and the safety of SP-based COVID-19 vaccines. More broadly, disregard for the active physiological role of RBCs yields unreliable or erroneous report-ing of pharmacokinetic parameters as routinely obtained for most drugs and other bioactive agents using detection in plasma, with whole-blood levels being up to 30-fold higher. Appreciation of the active role of RBCs can elucidate the microvascular underpinnings of other health conditions, in-cluding cardiovascular disease, and therapeutic opportunities to address them. This preprint is an addendum to the published paper with the same title and abstract above, and it covers issues of science policy and integrity not directly related to the biochemical focus of the published paper. The formatting used in this preprint was applied to be consistent with the published paper.
Scheim et al. (Sat,) studied this question.