• https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/05/917317541/clots-strokes-and-rashes-is-covid-19-a-disease-of-the-blood-vessels

November 5, 202012:02 PM ET

WILL STONE

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Whether it’s strange rashes on the toes or blood clots in the brain, the widespread ravages of COVID-19 have increasingly led researchers to focus on how the novel coronavirus sabotages the body’s blood vessels.

As scientists have come to know the disease better, they have homed in on the vascular system — the body’s network of arteries, veins and capillaries, stretching more than 60,000 miles — to understand this wide-ranging disease and to find treatments that can stymie its most pernicious effects.

Some of the earliest insights into how COVID-19 can act like a vascular disease came fromstudyingthe aftermath of the most serious infections. Those reveal that the virus warps a critical piece of our vascular infrastructure: the single layer of cells lining the inside of every blood vessel, known…