Abstract
Background: As the outbreak of COVID-19 has accelerated, an urgent need for finding strategies to combat the virus is growing. Thus, gaining more knowledge on the pathogenicity mechanism of SARS-CoV-2, i.e. the causing agent of COVID-19, and its interaction with the immune system is of utmost importance. Although this novel virus is not well known yet, its structural and genetic similarity with SARS-CoV as well as the comparable pattern of age-mortality relations suggest that some previous findings on SARS could be applicable for COVID-19. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the most important signaling pathways activated by coronaviruses to better understand the viral pathogenesis and host immune responses. Method: Here, a systems biology study was conducted on a SARS database. It was followed by a literature review on the cognate subject. Results: It was proved that interferons may possess a crucial role in the defense against coronavirus diseases. The literature supported the validity of the employed approach and the notion that interferon induction could play a key role in the body defense against coronavirus infections. Conclusion: Altogether, administration of interferons or interferon-inducing agents in a prophylactic manner or at the early stages of the disease, could mimic the effective antiviral responses against SARS-CoV-2 and reduce the disease severity. At later stages of the disease, however, the balance of the immune reactions would be disrupted and the responses would shift toward immunopathogenic over-reactions, which could be exacerbated by the interferon usage. Moderating the activity of the immune system by anti-inflammatory agents, might be the optimum approach in such conditions.
Highlights
Coronaviruses (CoVs) are a group of RNA viruses that have the largest RNA genome among all the viruses known to date [1,2]
The list of the DEGs obtained through iLINCS is represented in the supplementary, Tables S1 and S2
As seen on Fig. [1], the results of the enrichment analysis indicated that the 100-top selected genes are mostly significantly associated with the immune system, IFN signaling, and viral infections
Summary
Coronaviruses (CoVs) are a group of RNA viruses that have the largest RNA genome among all the viruses known to date [1,2]. Their genome is surrounded by a bilayer lipid envelope containing the spike and membrane proteins [3]. CoVs replicate by the attachment of their spike protein to the host cell receptors resulting in release of the viral genome into the cell [4]. They have several hosts including animals and human [5]. Despite the differences in the mortality and epidemiological rates of these three diseases, the pattern of age-specific mortality is similar; and the mortality rates get higher as the age increases with in the highest mortality rates among the elderly [9] (Table 1)
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