New Review Article: COVID-19 as an acute inflammatory disease
VIMM scientist Dr. Masoud Manjili and colleagues at Central Virginia Health Services, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine just published an invited review paper on COVID-19 in The Journal of Immunology (*).
Emerging evidence related to COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, is vast yet scattered and often contradictory, making it difficult to decipher. The purpose of this review is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the disease in order to help provide some guidance in the development of effective therapeutic strategies. This review highlighted key factors below:
- Severity of COVID-19 is determined by host factors rather than by viremia. To this end, hyper-activation of the innate immune response results in lung damage and blood clots, and inhibits the induction of host-protective adaptive immune responses.
- Anti-inflammatory corticosteroids or NSAIDs might alleviate inflammation, but also inhibit the induction of host-protective immune responses, leaving patients at risk of reinfection after recovery.
- Highly tailored anti-inflammatory drugs such as losartan that blocks type I angiotensin II receptor, thereby inhibiting inflammation without compromising an adaptive immune response, should be considered for the treatment of patients with severe symptoms.
Funding
: This work was supported by pilot funding from the VCU Massey Cancer Center (to M.H.M.) and supported in part by National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA016059.
Publications
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About the Investigators
: Masoud H. Manjili, PhD, DVM is Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and Affiliate Associate Professor of Pathology in the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Medicine, and is a Full Member of the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM).
