{"doi":"10.1111/sji.12944","title":"Are superantigens the cause of cytokine storm and viral sepsis in severe COVID‐19? Observations and hypothesis","abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Right now the world is going through an unprecedented pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus. Recent papers pointed out the fatal outcome in most of the severe cases, in which a cytokine storm has been proven to be the cause of a systemic shock, acute respiratory syndrome, multiorgan failure and consequently death. Several explanations have been proposed trying to explain the pathophysiology of the cytokine storm, but viral proteins with a possible superantigen activity as a cause of immune dysregulation have not been addressed. If this hypothesis is proven, a different treatment approach might change the outcome in severe cases.</jats:p>","journal":"Scandinavian Journal of Immunology","year":2020,"id":635671,"datarank":0.5333022092234121,"base_score":3.5553480614894135,"endowment":3.5553480614894135,"self_citation_contribution":0.5333022092234121,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5333022092234121,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":34,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":900005,"name":"Enrique R. Soriano","orcid":"0000-0003-3143-1084","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1649301,"name":"Valeria Scaglioni","orcid":"0000-0002-1163-7467","position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"resolved":true,"title":"Are superantigens the cause of cytokine storm and viral sepsis in severe COVID‐19? Observations and hypothesis","abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Right now the world is going through an unprecedented pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus. Recent papers pointed out the fatal outcome in most of the severe cases, in which a cytokine storm has been proven to be the cause of a systemic shock, acute respiratory syndrome, multiorgan failure and consequently death. Several explanations have been proposed trying to explain the pathophysiology of the cytokine storm, but viral proteins with a possible superantigen activity as a cause of immune dysregulation have not been addressed. 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