Concept

Is asthma protective against COVID-19?

  • This paper details the hypothesis that asthma may act as a protective comorbidity against the infection of COVID-19
  • In asthmatics, there is high level of Th2 cells already present near the lungs to assist with lowering the severity of eosinophilic inflammation brought on upon by asthma
  • The presence of these cells could assist with the mediation of immune system responses brought on by COVID-19 including hyperactive I IFN expression
  • IFN also plays a large role in COVID-19 immune response as it signals for many downstream effects, including cytokine storm syndrome
  • Since cytokine storm syndrome has been directly linked to more severe COVID-19 cases with worse outcomes, the suppression of hyper IFN expression allows for asthmatics to see lower risk COVID-19 cases or even immunity to the virus all together, further illustrated in Figure 2

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Updated 2020-10-21

Tags

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)

Biomedical Sciences