Why COVID-19 Accelerates Stroke Risk?

A study led by University of California- Los Angeles Health Sciences (UCLA) used 3D-printed 'blood vessels' to explain how COVID-19 virus increases the risk of stroke.
Researchers did a study about the running fluid spiked with a COVID-19-like protein through a 3D-printed model of the arteries of a patient who had suffered a stroke. Although COVID-19 was first identified by its severe respiratory symptoms, little is known about how the virus increases the risk for stroke.
To enhance the findings, UCLA researchers used a 3D-printed silicone model of blood vessels in the brain to mimic the forces generated by blood pushing through an artery that is abnormally narrowed, a condition called intracranial atherosclerosis. They showed that as those forces act on the cells lining the artery, and increase the production of a molecule called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, or ACE2, which the coronavirus uses to enter cells on the surface of blood vessels.
Dr Jason Hinman, an assistant professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study's senior author claimed that the flow directly influences ACE2 expression.
In addition to Hinman, the study's authors are neurologists at the Geffen School of Medicine and scientists from UC San Francisco and the Veterans Health Administration. The paper was published (PDF) in Stroke.
UCLA researchers created the model using data from CT scans of blood vessels in a human brain. They then lined the inner surfaces of the models with endothelial cells, the type of cells that line human blood vessels. The models enabled the researchers to mimic the same forces that would act on real blood vessels during a COVID-19 infection.
To confirm whether coronavirus bobbing along in the bloodstream...