TABLE 1.

Overview of various organs susceptible to viral infection with SARS-CoV-2 and their clinical symptoms in COVID-19 patients.

Organ/tract	Cellular tropism	Viral transcripts detected	Viral immune-staining in material of COVID-19 patients (IF or IHC)	Clinical symptoms in COVID-19 patients	References
Respiratory tract	(Non-) ciliated cells	+	+	Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)	(Hou et al., 2020
					Ahn et al., 2021;
					Ravindra et al., 2021
					Robinot et al., 2021
					V’kovski et al. 2021a)
Gastrointestinal tract	Glandular epithelium, enterocytes	+	+	Diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting	(Parasa et al., 2020
					Xiao et al., 2020)
Liver	Hepatocytes, Cholangiocytes	+	+	Elevated levels of metabolic enzymes (ALT, AST, GGT), steatosis, fibrosis and cirrhosis, thrombosis	(Lagana et al., 2020
					Sonzogni et al., 2020
					Lopez-Mendez et al., 2021)
Heart	Cardiomyocytes	+	+	Heart injury, arrythmias, myocarditis	(Huang et al., 2020
					Rey et al., 2020
					Coromilas et al., 2021
					Pellegrini et al., 2021)
Pancreas	β-cells	+	+	Pancreatitis, onset type 1 Diabetes Mellitus, ketoacidosis	(Akarsu et al., 2020
					Hadi et al., 2020
					Wang et al., 2020a
					Pandanaboyana et al., 2021)
Kidney	Proximal tubular epithelium, glomeruli	+	+	Glomerulopathy, heavy proteinuria and podocytopathy	(Braun et al., 2020
					Cheng et al., 2020
					Puelles et al., 2020
					Shetty et al., 2021)
Reproductive system	Not determined	?	?	Hypospermatogenesis	(Yang et al., 2020b
					Ma et al., 2021b)
Central nervous system	Not clear	+/−	+/−	Cognitive deficits, headaches	(Meinhardt et al., 2021
					Pajo et al., 2021
					Song et al., 2021)
Vasculature	Endothelial cells; pericytes	—	+	Endothelial dysfunction	(He et al., 2020
					Teuwen et al., 2020
					Varga et al., 2020
					Maccio et al., 2021)