Charting a path forward with unifying definition of cytokine storm – Penn Today

One of the most elusive aspects for clinicians treating COVID-19 is the bodys immune response to the virus. In the most severe cases of COVID-19, the immune system goes into overdrive, resulting in a fever, multiorgan system damage, and often deatha cytokine storm. But how to detect and treat a cytokine storm requires that clinicians can identify it as such.

Two Penn Medicine researchers have developed a unifying definition of cytokine storm to provide physicians with a framework to assess and treat severely-ill patients whose immune systems have gone rogue. Cytokine storms can be triggered by different pathogens, disorders, or treatments, from COVID-19 to Castleman disease to CAR T cell therapy.

In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, David Fajgenbaum, an assistant professor of translational medicine & human genetics and director of the Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory (CSTL), and Carl June, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies in the Abramson Cancer Center, and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapies define a cytokine storm as requiring elevated circulating cytokine levels, acute systemic inflammatory symptoms, and secondary organ dysfunction beyond what could be attributed to a normal response to a pathogen, if a pathogen is present.

There has never been a defining central review of what a cytokine storm is and how to treat one, and now with COVID-19, that is a major issue, says Fajgenbaum, a Castleman disease patient who has previously experienced five cytokine storms himself. Ive spent the last 10 years of my life as a cytokine storm patient and researcher, so I know the importance of having a comprehensive unified definition to find therapies that work across the various types of cytokine storms.

There is widespread recognition that the immune response to a pathogen, but not the pathogen itself, can contribute to multiorgan dysfunction and other symptoms. Additionally, similar cytokine storm syndromes can occur with no obvious infection.

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Charting a path forward with unifying definition of cytokine storm - Penn Today