Cholesterol: A friend to viruses

Abstract

Cholesterol is a key life-sustaining molecule which regulates membrane fluidity and serves as a signaling mediator. Cholesterol homeostasis is closely related to various pathological conditions including tumor, obesity, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and viral infection. Viral infection disrupts host cholesterol homeostasis, facilitating their own survival. Meanwhile, the host cells strive to reduce cholesterol accessibility to limit viral infection. This review focuses on the regulation of cholesterol metabolism and the role of cholesterol in viral infection, specifically providing an overview of cholesterol as a friend to promote viral entry, replication, assembly, release and immune evasion, which might inspire valuable thinking for pathogenesis and intervention of viral infection.

Graphical Abstract

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Cholesterol is a metabolically important molecule. The disruption of cholesterol homeostasis is closely related to various diseases including tumor, atherosclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. Moreover, viral infection is a highly cholesterol-dependent process. Important stages in the life cycle of viruses require the involvement of cholesterol. Viral infection breaks the cholesterol homeostasis in host cells, which is conducive to their own survival. This review aims to characterize the regulation of cholesterol metabolism and the role of cholesterol in viral infection, which would shed new light on the design of antiviral drugs.

Keywords:

• Antiviral therapy
• cholesterol metabolism
• host defense
• viral infection

Acknowledgement

The scientific illustrations in graphical abstract and Figures 1–4 were created using BioRender.com.

Data availability

In this review, the authors do not report any original data.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82271878, 81971480), Joint fund project of Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2019LZL013).