Dr. Madhan Jeyaraman throws light on the topic of Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) therapy for treating critically ill COVID-19 patients.
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The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) is a highly contagious viral infection which emerged as ‘Pneumonia of Unknown Aetiology’ at Hubei province of Wuhan city in China in the late December 2019. [1] The health authorities provided considerable empirical evidence after this outbreak and it was notified that the causative virus, named Novel Coronavirus, with high mutational tendencies, is the culprit for progressively exerting grim effects on individual patients, as well as international public health.
WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11th March, 2020 when more than 11,00,283 confirmed positive cases and approximately 59,000 deaths occurred globally. [1] WHO coined the name for the Novel Coronavirus as 2019-nCoV/COVID-19, which was subsequently changed to SARS-CoV-2. It belongs to the family Coronaviridae with two subfamilies namely, the coronaviruses and the toroviruses. [2] The viral infection is contracted through human to human transmission. [3] This can occur via direct contact with an infected person- exposure to coughing, sneezing, respiratory droplets or aerosol which penetrates human lungs via inhalation through nose or mouth and via indirect contact such as fomites.
The spike glycoproteins in SARS-CoV2 uses ACE-2 receptors for the entry of virus into the cell and the TMPRSS2 serine protease aids in S protein priming. The mortality in COVID-19 patients is preceded by acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) because of the cytokine storm, a mechanism resulting in uncontrolled systemic inflammatory response from the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IFN-α, IFN-γ, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-12, IL-8, IL-33, TNF-α, TGF-β) and chemokines (CCL2, CCL3, CCL5, CXCL8, CXCL9, CXCL-10 etc). [4] It culminates in oedema, dysfunction of air exchange, acute respiratory distress syndrome, acute cardiac injury and the secondary infection which may lead to death. [5]
