The college of pharmacy at the University of Baghdad has organized recently an electronic workshop entitled “Covid-19 and the Cytokine Storm Syndrome” delivered by Assist. Prof. Dr. Zainab Majid al-Hakim, a faculty member at the clinical laboratory sciences branch with the aim to highlight the most important syndrome significantly linked to the risk of Covid-19 infection.
The lecturer at first addressed the most important proteins of this infectious virus, which could be the target of the immune response to the host’s body and the steps taken by the human body to control and reduce the spread of diseases, particularly the viral ones. It is noteworthy that the cytokine storm syndrome (CSS) occurs when large numbers of white blood cells are activated and release inflammatory cytokines, which in turn activate yet more white blood cells. Then Dr. Zainab Majid talked about the most common immune factors that cause this disease such as ACE2 and TLR3&7 that lead to the release of a series of different cytokines (IL2, TNFα, IL6, IL8, IFNγ GM-CSF) and when their secretion increases continuously it may lead to hyper-inflammation, destroying most of the pulmonary tissue and causing a failure for different organs of the human body.
