The Cytokine storm in COVID-19: Further advances in our understanding the role of specific chemokines involved

Coperchini, Francesca; Chiovato, Luca; Ricci, Gianluca; Croce, Laura; Magri, Flavia; Rotondi, Mario

SARS-COV-2 infection represents the greatest pandemic of the world, counting daily increasing number of subjects positive to the virus and, sadly, increasing number of deaths. Current studies reported that the cytokine/chemokine network is crucial in the onset and maintenance of the “cytokine storm”, the event occurring in those patients in whom the progression of COVID-19 will progress, in most cases, to a very severe and potentially threatening disease. Detecting a possible “immune signature” in patients, as assessed by chemokines status in patients with COVID-19, could be helpful for individual risk stratification for developing a more or less severe clinical course of the disease. The present review is specifically aimed at overviewing current evidences provided by in vitro and in vivo studies addressing the issue of which chemokines seems to be involved, at least at present, in COVID-19. Currently available experimental and clinical studies regarding those chemokines more deeply studied in COVID-19, with a specific focus on their role in the cytokine storm and ultimately with their ability to predict the clinical course of the disease, will be taken into account. Moreover, similarities and differences between chemokines and cytokines, which both contribute to the onset of the pro-inflammatory loop characterizing SARS-COV-2 infection, will be briefly discussed. Future studies will rapidly accumulate in the next months and their results will hopefully provide more insights as to the complex physiopathology of COVID-19-related cytokine storm. This will likely make the present review somehow “dated” in a short time, but still the present review provides an overview of the scenario of the current knowledge on this topic.