Nikaïa Smith

TL;DR: The results of this trio of studies suggest that the location, timing, and duration of IFN exposure are critical parameters underlying the success or failure of therapeutics for viral respiratory infections.

TL;DR: The COVID Human Genetic Effort established to test the general hypothesis that life-threatening COVID-19 in some or most patients may be caused by monogenic inborn errors of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 with incomplete or complete penetrance finds an enrichment in variants predicted to be loss-of-function (pLOF), with a minor allele frequency <0.001.

TL;DR: It is proposed that type-I IFN deficiency in the blood is a hallmark of severe Covid-19 and could identify and define a high-risk population and raise concern for utilization of drugs that interfere with the IFN pathway.

TL;DR: A critical mechanism by which sex differences in basal pDC IRF5 expression lead to higher IFN-α production upon TLR7 stimulation in females is demonstrated and novel targets for the modulation of immune responses and inflammation are provided.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the functional and structural consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection in a reconstructed human bronchial epithelium model and identified cilia damage as a pathogenic mechanism that could facilitate SARS CoV2 spread to the deeper lung parenchyma.