Six years after COVID-19 reshaped the world, researchers at UCLA have illuminated a hidden mechanism behind the virus's most enduring harms — one residing not in the celebrated spike protein, but in the quieter nucleocapsid protein that packages the virus's genetic material. This protein, it turns out, plays both sides of the immune battlefield: silencing the body's early warnings while later stoking a dangerous inflammatory fire inside the very cells meant to protect us. The discovery offers not only a more complete portrait of how COVID-19 damages the heart and brain, but a potential map tow
UCLA study reveals how SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein triggers dangerous immune overreaction
Long COVID patients experience ongoing complications from tissue damage caused by hyperinflammatory immune responses triggered by viral proteins.