Thoughts of an Immunobiologist about Covid-19

Abstract

instinctively, or by learning, using aspects of our five senses, to avoid potential harm and what can either be pleasant or useful. Deployment of the five senses is similar in most vertebrates. In addition to the five basic senses, concerned directly with responses to environmental changes, there are internal more arcane senses which are also interface regulatory devices, operating either to protect us from danger or beneficially to enhance our life experiences. Some of these inner senses relate to such interactions as are involved with our responses to Covid-19 which we cannot see, smell, hear, taste or sense by touch. The inner senses are complex and include what are usually called the immune responses. The immune responses are widely believed, in a variety of ways, to be protective and to involve a non-cognitive learning element, referred to by many professional immunologists as immunologic memory. As far as protection is concerned this seems sensible in what can be seen as a hostile world that, following the thinking of Charles Darwin, Tennyson wrote of as ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’. The whole concept of ‘immune’ implies ‘not affected by’. Wikipedia gives the meaning of ‘immune’ as ‘resistant to a particular infection or toxin owing to the presence of specific antibodies or sensitized white blood cells’. This definition could be thought largely to ignore one of the basic defense mechanisms of the body the innate immune response. Abstract Attention is drawn to the existence of two very different facets of the immune processes operating consequent upon infection; Innate, a primitive mechanism which is quick acting and which plays a major part in inflammatory processes, and Adaptive, a mechanism that is slower to deliver elements specifically adapted from its recognition of the foreign invader. The cytokine storms that can be a harmful outcome of the response to infection derive initially from components of the innate immune system which, in addition to responding to foreignness, are activated by dead and/or dying cells of the infected host. It is suggested that although attack on the invading virus, by, say vaccination, seems the logical way to reduce the consequences of infection, it could be that exploration of the immunopathological effects of invasion could also help to specify means to reduce their impact. In particular it is suggested that prebiotics, orally ingested materials that can have beneficial effects on the gut micro biota, may be able beneficially to modify potentially harmful patterns of inflammation. In addition attention is drawn to the possibly exacerbating role of CRP an acute phase protein for which antagonists have been devised which could also help to reduce immunopathology.