Neutrophils and COVID-19: What Is Going On?

de Andrade, Micássio Fernandes; Marzocchi-Machado, Cleni Mara

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed urgency to answer numerous questions about the control of viral infections and the dual immune response of protection of and damage to the host, with the purpose of finding specific and efficient treatments and strategies for prevention of infection. The association between severe cases of the disease and overactivation of the immune response has raised the hypotheses that the inflammatory response participates in the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and that neutrophils are important effector cells of such response. In this sense, neutrophils are potential targets for pharmacological interventions to treat this infection. The present paper briefly describes the neutrophil biology and discusses the possible roles that neutrophils play in the pathogenesis of COVID-19, based on literature data.