COM Outlook Summer/Fall 2020

NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY | 17 First-Person Perspectives W e are living through unprecedented times. As educators and health care providers—past, present, and future—you are all keenly tuned in to the daily fluctuations in news from scientists and clinicians. Most, if not all, of us agree that this can be a pernicious virus with the ability to go berserk once it gets past our nose and deep into the lungs. From there, it enters the bloodstream and invades other organs, including the brain. The virus either succumbs to the infected person’s healthy innate immune system or manages to get past a possibly beleaguered immune mechanism, only to run into our tailored immune system fighting a battle specific to this exact virus. This is a very crucial stage, and the balance could tilt in either direction. The trump card the virus uses at this point is to overwhelm the immune system by creating a cytokine storm. Cytokines are chemicals released by immune cells to attract other immune cells to the scene of attack. The storm, created when the virus triggers multiple activation points, results in an overzealous immune system, which now starts to attack the human. This results in multiple organs coming under attack, adding to the complications the COVID-19 patient suffers. In the absence of a drug tailored specifically against this virus, we are making do with repurposed drugs by both targeting viral proteins and prevent- ing more viruses from being made. This helps dampen the cytokine storm or boost a neutralizing response that will kill the virus. Furthermore, although we don’t have a vaccine yet, there have been at least 115 vac- cine candidates developed globally—with a few of them already in clinical trials. As to what we can do in the absence of a Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccine or therapeutic, I am happy to hear even laypeople talk about social distancing and masks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided guidelines that have become commonplace recommendations. These include staying home when sick, wearing a mask when out in public, and keeping our social distance, as well as following good hand hygiene, proper cough and sneeze etiquette, and environ- mental disinfection. What would be great to add to this is how we take care of ourselves, which also includes how we shore up our immune system. There are two points I would like to make: Foster a good gut flora and de-stress actively—both of which will support your immune system and keep you in a better state of overall health. Bindu S. Mayi is a KPCOM professor of microbiology and an associate professor of public health. BY BINDU S. MAYI, PH.D., M.SC . The Virus See-Saw Bindu S. Mayi The trump card the virus uses at this point is to overwhelm the immune system by creating a cytokine storm. Cytokines are chemicals released by immune cells to attract other immune cells to the scene of attack. MICROBIOLOGIST