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Review
. 2021 Oct 27:14:4421-4426.
doi: 10.2147/IDR.S335447. eCollection 2021.

The Influence of Helminth Immune Regulation on COVID-19 Clinical Outcomes: Is it Beneficial or Detrimental?

Muluneh Ademe  1 , Friehiwot Girma  2
Affiliations
Review

The Influence of Helminth Immune Regulation on COVID-19 Clinical Outcomes: Is it Beneficial or Detrimental?

Muluneh Ademe et al. Infect Drug Resist. .

Abstract

Immunologically, chronic worm infections prevent themselves from strong immune responses by skewing the host response towards a T helper 2 (Th2) type. The regulatory response initiated by helminth infections is supposed to temper responses to non-helminth antigens including viral infections which will, in turn, alter the clinical outcomes of infections. In view of this, recent reports highlighted the possible negative associations of severe COVID-19 and helminth co-infections in helminth-endemic regions. As the pathology of COVID-19 is primarily mediated by an excessive immune response and subsequent cytokine storm, which contributes to the poor prognosis of COVID-19, helminth-driven immune modulation will hypothetically contribute to the less severe outcomes of COVID-19. Nevertheless, emerging reports also stated that COVID-19 and helminth co-infections may have more hidden outcomes than predictable ones. Herein, the current knowledge on the interaction of COVID-19 and helminth co-infections will be discussed.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; Th2 response; cytokine storm; worm co-infections.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest for this work.

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