Discharge may not be the end of treatment: pay attention to pulmonary fibrosis caused by severe COVID-19.

Zhang, Chi; Wu, Zhao; Li, Jia-Wen; Tan, Kangan; Yang, Wanna; Zhao, Hong; Wang, Gui-Qiang

Since December 2019, COVID-19 has rapidly swept the world. So far, more than 30 million people have been infected and nearly one million have died. Although the world is still in the stage of COVID-19 pandemic, the treatment of new cases and critically ill patients is the focus of the current work. However, COVID-19 patients lead to pulmonary fibrosis, such a serious threat to the prognosis of complications were also worthy of our attention. First of all, we proposed the possible mechanism of pulmonary fibrosis caused by SARS-CoV-2, based on the published data of COVID-19 (①Direct evidence: pulmonary fibrosis was found in autopsy and pulmonary puncture pathology.②Indirect evidence: increased levels of fibrosis-related cytokines[TGF- β, TNF- α, IL-6, etc.] in peripheral blood of severe patients.). What's more, we summarized the role of three fibrosis-related signaling pathways (TGF- β signal pathway, WNT signal pathway and YAP/TAZ signal pathway) in pulmonary fibrosis. Finally, we suggested the therapeutic value of two drugs (Pirfenidone and Nintedanib) for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in COVID-19-induced pulmonary fibrosis. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.