Immunogenetics Predictors With COVID-19

There is a current worldwide outbreak of the novel corona virus covid19(coronavirus disease 2019; the pathogen called SARS-CoV-2; previously 2019-nCoV), which originated from Wuhan in china and has now spread to 6 continents including 210 countries. Corona viruses are a group of enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome. It mainly infects humans and animals, causing respiratory, gastrointestinal, hepatic, and neurologic diseases. The causative agent, SARS-CoV-2 was the third coronavirus responsible for causing major disease outbreaks in human population after Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) caused by SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV respectively. The patients of COVID-19 present with a clinical feature resembling mild form of viral pneumonia which in certain cases progress to a severe form characterised by adult respiratory diseases syndrome (ARDS) and/or multiorgan failure leading to death.

Antigenic peptides are presented by major histocompatibility complex (MHC; or human leukocyte antigen (HLA) in humans) and then recognized by virus-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). Hence, the understanding of the antigen presentation of SARS-CoV-2 will help our comprehension of COVID-19 pathogenesis. However, there is still a lack of any report about SARS-CoV-2; we can get a lot of information from previous researches on SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. The antigen presentation of SARS-CoV mainly depends on MHC I molecules, but MHC II also contributes to its presentation.

These findings may provide valuable information for the rational design of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. One of the main mechanisms for ARDS is the cytokine storm, the deadly uncontrolled systemic inflammatory response resulting from the release of huge amounts of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokine’s by immune effector cells in SARS-CoV infection.

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John
Editorial Assistant
Immunogenetics Open Access