Mostafa H. Elberry

Cytokine storms can be triggered by various infectious or noninfectious diseases and cause severe damages to multiple organs. Cytokine storm plays an important role in the pathogenesis of severe cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The pathogenesis of COVID-19 involves a potent inflammatory response involving a complex group of mediators, including interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-10. In this study, the serum levels of IL-6 and IL-10 cytokines were evaluated in 79 COVID-19 infected patients from the National Hepatology and Tropical Medicine Research Institute, Cairo, Egypt. And 20 healthy individuals served as a control group. The patients were divided into moderate, severe, and critically ill. In this study, IL-6 and IL-10 levels were significantly elevated in COVID-19 patients compared with healthy controls. IL-6 levels were significantly higher in patients compared with controls ( = 0.001), although it was not varied within different severity groups except for moderate-critical ill cases ( < 0.033). IL-10 only showed a significant difference between critically ill and control cases ( < 0.002). Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses showed that IL-6 levels >120 pg/mL can predict moderate and critically ill patients with a sensitivity of 90.48% and a specificity of 62.50%, Area Under the Curve <0.0001. In conclusion, the serum levels of IL-6 cytokine are important noninvasive biomarkers to differentiate between moderate and critically ill COVID-19 infected patients.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has emerged as a global public health emergency, which is characterized by high infection rate and fatal course. Recent data reported that the test for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA might become positive again after one or two consecutively negative tests. Many researchers are currently evaluating the clinical characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 reactivation. In this letter, we proposed a possible mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 reactivation or relapse after negative nasopharyngeal swabs PCR.

Ebola virus causes severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fevers in humans. The 2014 Ebola epidemic affected multiple countries. The virus matrix protein (VP40) plays a central role in virus assembly and budding. Since there is no FDA-approved vaccine or medicine against Ebola viral infection, discovering new compounds with different binding patterns against it is required. Therefore, we aim to identify small molecules that target the Arg 134 RNA binding and active site of VP40 protein. 1800 molecules were retrieved from PubChem compound database based on Structure Similarity and Conformers of pyrimidine-2, 4-dione. Molecular docking approach using Lamarckian Genetic Algorithm was carried out to find the potent inhibitors for VP40 based on calculated ligand-protein pairwise interaction energies. The grid maps representing the protein were calculated using auto grid and grid size was set to 60*60*60 points with grid spacing of 0.375 Ǻ. Ten independent docking runs were carried out for each ligand and results were clustered according to the 1.0 Ǻ RMSD criteria. The post-docking analysis showed that binding energies ranged from -8.87 to 0.6 Kcal/mol. We report 7 molecules, which showed promising ADMET results, LD-50, as well as H-bond interaction in the binding pocket. The small molecules discovered could act as potential inhibitors for VP40 and could interfere with virus assembly and budding process.