{"id":106309,"date":"2020-05-01T02:05:32","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T09:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/cytokine-storms-and-t-cell-counts-may-offer-clues-on-how-to-treat-covid-19"},"modified":"2020-05-01T02:05:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T09:05:32","slug":"cytokine-storms-and-t-cell-counts-may-offer-clues-on-how-to-treat-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/cytokine-storms-and-t-cell-counts-may-offer-clues-on-how-to-treat-covid-19","title":{"rendered":"Cytokine storms and T cell counts may offer clues on how to treat COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Cytokine storms may affect the severity of COVID-19 cases by lowering T cell counts, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Immunology<\/i>. Researchers studying coronavirus cases in China found that sick patients had a significantly low number of T cells, a type of white blood cell that plays a crucial role in immune response, and that T cell counts were negatively correlated with case severity.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, they also found a high concentration of cytokines, a protein that normally helps fight off infection. Too many cytokines can trigger an excessive inflammatory response known as a cytokine storm, which causes the proteins to attack healthy cells<\/a>. The study suggests that coronavirus does not attack T cells directly, but rather triggers the cytokine release, which then drives the depletion and exhaustion of T cells.<\/p>\n

The findings offer clues on how to target treatment for COVID-19, which has become a worldwide pandemic and a widespread threat to human health in the past few months. \u201cWe should pay more attention to T cell counts and their function, rather than respiratory function of patients,\u201d says author Dr. Yongwen Chen of Third Military Medical University in China, adding that \u201cmore urgent, early intervention<\/a> may be required in patients with low T lymphocyte counts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cytokine storms may affect the severity of COVID-19 cases by lowering T cell counts, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Immunology. Researchers studying coronavirus cases in China found that sick patients had a significantly low number of T cells, a type of white blood cell that plays a crucial role in immune [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}