Editorial: From Pathogenic Infections to Inflammation and Disease - the Tumultuous Road of the ‘Cytokine Storm’

Abstract

Editorial on the Research TopicFrom Pathogenic Infections to Inflammation and Disease -the Tumultuous Road of the 'Cytokine Storm'In the last decades, the incidence of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases have dramatically increased threatening the public health systems worldwide. The appearance of several new pathogens causing disease of marked severity, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other retroviruses, arenaviruses, hantaviruses, Ebola virus and coronaviruses, as well as the simultaneous re-appearance of old pathogens including those that cause cholera, plague, severe dengue, and yellow fever, are having a considerable impact on the global public health and the economy (Anderson and Gray, 2014). Currently, it is estimated that over 25% of human mortality worldwide is attributable to infectious diseases, which translates in 15 million deaths per year mainly occurring among children (<5 years of age) from developing countries (Michaud, 2009). Recently, the rapid spread of a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) caused over 200 million of cases and almost 5 million of deaths in an unprecedent pandemic with long-term consequences on human health and global behavior (WHO, 2021). Coronaviruses are a diverse group of viruses infecting many different animals, and they can cause mild to severe respiratory infections in humans (Shereen et al., 2020). This new highly transmissible and pathogenic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 caused an acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), named 'coronavirus disease 2019' (COVID-19), mainly characterized by rapid lung deterioration that results in a robust immunological response triggering a phenomenon called cytokine storm that according to several reports contributes significantly to the severity of COVID-19, leading to multiple organ failure and millions of deaths (