Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak

Role of Immune system in SARS-CoV-2

The human coronaviruses are generally very long around 30,000 bp, positive – single-stranded RNA viruses. Coronaviruses are like MERS & SARS are specifically adept at deceiving immune response. In case of viral infection, host factors evoke the immune response against the viral cells. Mainly, T-cells, specifically CD8+ and CD4+ cells play a major antiviral role to delete the virus & to raise the risk of developing autoimmunity. The CD4+ T cells raise the amount of viral oriented antibodies by initiating the T cell-dependent B cells. And CD8+ T cells play a critical role in clearing the coronaviruses in infected cells and evoking immune injury. Moreover, it was also noted that T cell apoptosis was evoked by a novel BH3-like region presented in the C-terminal cytosolic domain of COVID-19 protein mediated by Bcl-xL [25]. From the scientific studies, it was confirmed that T cells respond to the S protein and other structural receptors like M and N proteins. It also noted that augmentation of SARS-CoV particularly neutralizing the antibodies requires CD4+ T helper cells. Basically, these immunological studies expose how compelling it is to figure out the basics of the immune responses in these viruses, so these immune cells can be proceed with the viral attack with more specificity.