Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an acute respiratory disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2).
COVID-19 can spread to the entire body and cause
multiple organ failure. It is a daunting challenge to control the fast growing worldwide pandemic because effective prevention and treatment strategies are unavailable currently. Generally, the immune response of the human body triggered by
viral infection is essential for the elimination of the virus. However, severe
COVID-19 patients may manifest dysregulated immune responses, such as
lymphopenia, lymphocyte exhaustion, exacerbated antibody response,
cytokine release syndrome (CRS), etc. Understanding of these immunological characteristics may help identify better approaches for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of
COVID-19 patients. As specific anti-viral agents are notoriously difficult to develop, strategies for modulating the immune responses by either developing novel
vaccines or using
immunotherapy hold great promise to improve the management of
SARS-CoV-2 infection.