Immune determinants of covid-19 disease presentation and severity

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PersPective

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-01202-8

1

Science for Life Laboratory, Department. of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institutet, Solna, Sweden. 

2

Pediatric Rheumatology, Karolinska 

University Hospital, Solna, Sweden. 

✉

e-mail: 

[e-mail]

T

he SARS-CoV-2 virus infects humans via droplets, and to 

some extent, aerosol

. In symptomatic adults, the disease 

typically presents after 2–14 days of incubation as a respira-

tory illness with fever, cough, headache, myalgia and in some cases 

intestinal symptom

. A growing number of studies are pointing 

toward asymptomatic infection in a significant fraction of individu-

als

, and as many as half of all transmission events occur from pres-

ymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals

.

In this Perspective, I discuss what we know about the immune 

response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and how this might explain dif-

ferent disease presentations and disease severity by considering 

known immunological differences between the groups that are most 

commonly affected.