{"id":230578,"date":"2026-02-05T05:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T11:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/zombie-remnants-of-covid-19-hunt-in-packs-and-kill-our-immune-cells"},"modified":"2026-02-05T05:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T11:26:15","slug":"zombie-remnants-of-covid-19-hunt-in-packs-and-kill-our-immune-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/zombie-remnants-of-covid-19-hunt-in-packs-and-kill-our-immune-cells","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Zombie\u2019 Remnants of COVID-19 Hunt In Packs And Kill Our Immune Cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/zombie-remnants-of-covid-19-hunt-in-packs-and-kill-our-immune-cells2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2018Zombie\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/coronavirus\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">coronavirus<\/a> fragments not only <a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.ucla.edu\/releases\/viral-protein-fragments-behind-serious-covid-19-outcomes\">help drive inflammation<\/a> in long-COVID, but also destroy our immune cells.<\/p>\n<p>A recent study by an international team of more than 30 authors reveals how the destruction of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/virus\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">virus<\/a> within our body leaves dangerous protein fragments that target specific immune cells, which may explain some of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/life-with-long-covid-comparable-to-parkinsons-and-stroke\">debilitating consequences<\/a> millions of people with long-COVID <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-has-surged-since-the-pandemic-study-reveals\">now face<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese fragments target a specific kind of curvature on the membranes of cells,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.ucla.edu\/releases\/covid-19-viral-fragments-target-kill-specific-immune-cells\">explains<\/a> bioengineer Gerard Wong from the University of California, Los Angeles. \u201cCells that are spiky, that are star-shaped, or that have lots of tentacles end up getting preferentially suppressed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Zombie\u2019 coronavirus fragments not only help drive inflammation in long-COVID, but also destroy our immune cells. A recent study by an international team of more than 30 authors reveals how the destruction of the virus within our body leaves dangerous protein fragments that target specific immune cells, which may explain some of the debilitating consequences [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}