AUTHOR=Ruscitti Piero , Berardicurti Onorina , Di Benedetto Paola , Cipriani Paola , Iagnocco Annamaria , Shoenfeld Yehuda , Giacomelli Roberto 

TITLE=Severe COVID-19, Another Piece in the Puzzle of the Hyperferritinemic Syndrome. An Immunomodulatory Perspective to Alleviate the Storm

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology

VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01130

DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2020.01130

ISSN=1664-3224

ABSTRACT=The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an acute respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, has declared as a public worldwide health emergency. Interestingly, severe COVID-19 is characterised by fever, hyperferritinemia, and hyper-inflammatory process with massive release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which may be responsible for high rate of mortality. These findings may advocate a similarity between severe COVID-19 and some challenging rheumatic diseases, such as adult onset Still’s disease, secondary haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, and catastrophic anti-phospholipid syndrome, which have been included in the “hyperferritinaemic syndrome”. Furthermore, as performed in these hyper-inflammatory states, COVID-19 may probably benefit by immunomodulatory therapies.