Cholesterol in virus entry into host cell: Diet, phytosterols and statins

Abstract

Cholesterol has been reported in a number of studies to play an essential role in the effectiveness of viral infection in mammal cells. The main characteristic of cholesterol that is involved in viral infection is its capability to afford negative curvature to the membrane. This faculty of cholesterol has to do with the necessary steep curvature that the host cell membrane undergoes in the primary processes of viral infection. In particular, for RNA enveloped viruses, membrane curvature is involved in two mechanisms of the viral infection, which are virus and host cell membrane fusion for viral genome release and virus reproduction scaffold build-up. Low cholesterol diets have been shown to reduce or even suppress virus infection efficiency in murine models or cell cultures; but to what extent a diet-based lowering of the blood cholesterol level may help preventing virus infection still lacks enough scientific evidence. The use of statins in individuals with hypercholesterolemia has been recommended in the recent COVID-19 outbreak. The possibility of using sterols from natural sources in the diet or in supplementary concentrates has been suggested to be an alternative to drop the circulating cholesterol. In this manuscript, the most relevant and recent bibliography on the aforementioned issues is reviewed.