Immune Response Section

[cgreene]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

We have a number of places in the manuscript that discuss a SARS-CoV-2 associated cytokine storm. These include the Tocilizumab section ( https://greenelab.github.io/covid19-review/#tocilizumab ) as well as in a discussion of viral spreading from #224. This is likely to come up many times.

Describe the solution you'd like

Our 2.2 section ("Immune Response to SARS-CoV-2") would be an ideal place for this. Right now it's just an incomplete list. I think we should move a lot of the discussion of cytokine storms there and refer to them for a general explanation in each case. Then we could retain only the elements that are highly specific to Tocilizumab, viral entry, etc in their own sections.

Describe alternatives you've considered

We could keep things as they are, or we could add a glossary that we refer to. I think filling in 2.2 is superior to either of these.

Additional context

N/A

[rando2]

I think Troy Stevens (University of South Alabama) would be able to help with the section, specifically with regarding how these things affect the lungs. I don't think he has a GitHub yet but I will plan to loop him in once we have a more fleshed out outline for this section!

[matfax]

I've previously done literature research on how the cytokine system is thought to be mediated by SARS-CoV-2 (primarily mediation, not how the cytokines affect the lungs). But the topic is larger than I initially anticipated. The virus encodes various genes and pathways. My focus of interest is especially on the influence on the lymphocytes. If the CD147 theory turns out true, this will open a whole new chapter. I could add all references at once but there are still many other papers due for review. Moreover, my reviews are not founded on pathological expertise, thus they don't qualify.

[rando2]

Hi @matfax, you are definitely welcome to write reviews of preprints without an expertise in that specific field! I think one of the great strengths of this project is having people from different backgrounds look at preprints/papers and identify the strengths, weaknesses, and connections to other ideas. I have been finding lots of stats issues in all sorts of different papers, for example.

If you are able to put together some text about lymphocytes, that would be very helpful. I am hoping to make some progress on this, but I'm an evolutionary biologist, so I will be hoping some of the immunology folks will be willing to review!

[dziakj1]

A tutorial paper on cytokine storms by two researchers from U Penn just came out in the journal "Immunity." It might be useful to cite in this section. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761320302727

[jharenza]

Also, a short viewpoint from May could be useful: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6490/473.abstract

[rando2]

I'm sure we will want to keep working on this, but hoping it's in reasonable shape for the current draft so I'm moving the label to "future version". I definitely encourage everyone who is interested to review these sections of the manuscript critically, though!