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Review
. 2020 Aug 25;9(1):1807836.
doi: 10.1080/2162402X.2020.1807836.

Immune responses during COVID-19 infection

Affiliations
Review

Immune responses during COVID-19 infection

Cléa Melenotte et al. Oncoimmunology. .

Abstract

Over the past 16 years, three coronaviruses (CoVs), severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV (SARS-CoV) in 2002, Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV) in 2012 and 2015, and SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, have been causing severe and fatal human epidemics. The unpredictability of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) poses a major burden on health care and economic systems across the world. This is caused by the paucity of in-depth knowledge of the risk factors for severe COVID-19, insufficient diagnostic tools for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the absence of specific and effective drug treatments. While protective humoral and cellular immune responses are usually mounted against these betacoronaviruses, immune responses to SARS-CoV2 sometimes derail towards inflammatory tissue damage, leading to rapid admissions to intensive care units. The lack of knowledge on mechanisms that tilt the balance between these two opposite outcomes poses major threats to many ongoing clinical trials dealing with immunostimulatory or immunoregulatory therapeutics. This review will discuss innate and cognate immune responses underlying protective or deleterious immune reactions against these pathogenic coronaviruses.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Covid-19; Sars-CoV-2; cellular; humoral; immune response; immunity.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Natural history of COVID-19 infection, from incubation to critical disease.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19 identified in severe and critically ill patients (percentage in hospitalized patients).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Putative immune scenarios associated with protective immune responses.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Bats are the natural reservoir of betacoronaviruses: immune specificities.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Race between viral replication and immune responses during viral infection with SARS-CoV viruses.

References

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