Comparison of the Characteristics of Cytokine Storm and Immune Response Induced by SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 Infections

Tong Liu; Meng Feng; Zexin Wen; Yijie He; Wei Lin; Min Zhang

doi:10.2147/JIR.S329697

Comparison of the Characteristics of Cytokine Storm and Immune Response Induced by SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 Infections

J Inflamm Res. 2021 Oct 23:14:5475-5487. doi: 10.2147/JIR.S329697. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Tong Liu^#¹, Meng Feng^#², Zexin Wen³, Yijie He¹, Wei Lin², Min Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medicine, Xizang Minzu University, Xianyang, Shaanxi, People's Republic of China.
² School of Basic Medicine, Shandong First Medical University & Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Jinan, Shandong, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Clinical Medicine, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Cytokine storm (CS) is a significant cause of death in patients with severe coronavirus pneumonia. Excessive immune-inflammatory reaction, many inflammatory cell infiltration, and extreme increase of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines lead to acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This review compares the characters of cytokine storms and immune responses caused by three highly pathogenic and infectious coronaviruses (HCoVs), including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and analyzes the possible mechanisms to guide clinical treatment in the future.

Keywords: coronavirus pneumonia; cytokine storm; cytokines; immune evasion; interferon.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81860719); Xizang Science and Technology Department (In 2021); the COVID-19 Epidemics Emergency Project of Xizang Minzu University (XZMDYJ04). The funding sources had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the report.