Endothelial dysfunction in COVID-19 calls for immediate attention: the emerging roles of the endothelium in inflammation caused by SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused numerous deaths around the world. A growing body of evidence points to the important role of overwhelming inflammatory responses in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 and the effectiveness of anti-inflammation therapy against COVID-19 is emerging. In addition to affecting the lungs, COVID-19 can be a severe systemic inflammatory disease that is related to endothelial dysfunction. We are calling for closer attention to endothelial dysfunction in COVID-19 not only for fully revealing the pathogenic mechanism of COVID-19 but also for properly adjusting the strategy of clinical intervention.

Keywords

COVID-19 / endothelial dysfunction / inflammation reaction / cytokine storm

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Acknowledgements

We thank all our colleagues from the Division of Cardiology, Tongji Hospital, as well as all the medical staff fighting against COVID-19, for their tremendous efforts. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 91839302, 81630010, and 81790624) and Tongji Hospital Clinical Research Flagship Program (No. 2019CR207). No funding bodies had any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Weijian Hang, Chen Chen, Xin A. Zhang, and Dao Wen Wang declare that they have no competing interests. This manuscript does not involve a research protocol requiring approval by the relevant institutional review board or ethics committee.

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