Dissecting Platelet’s Role in Viral Infection: A Double-Edged Effector of the Immune System, 2023, Hajar El Filaly

Abstract
Platelets play a major role in the processes of primary hemostasis and pathological inflammation-induced thrombosis. In the mid-2000s, several studies expanded the role of these particular cells, placing them in the “immune continuum” and thus changing the understanding of their function in both innate and adaptive immune responses. Among the many receptors they express on their surface, platelets express Toll-Like Receptors (TLRs), key receptors in the inflammatory cell–cell reaction and in the interaction between innate and adaptive immunity. In response to an infectious stimulus, platelets will become differentially activated. Platelet activation is variable depending on whether platelets are activated by a hemostatic or pathogen stimulus. This review highlights the role that platelets play in platelet modulation count and adaptative immune response during viral infection.

Conclusions
Platelets are essential for vascular repair and maintenance of hemostasis, but they also play an important role in immunity by expressing numerous integrins as well as cytokine/chemokine receptors. Platelets are increasingly recognized as immune cells due to new platelet functions emerging over time. Platelets are now known to interact with all types of pathogens and most importantly viruses. Indeed, the platelet response, thought to be only simple but effective in hemostasis, is for sure extremely complex and targeted in inflammatory and immune responses.

In order to gain a clear understanding of antiplatelet therapies’ effects on viral infections, further studies are needed to explain the role of platelets in viral infections. By studying platelets during viral infections, we will be able to predict whether they will be beneficial or detrimental.

https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/3/2009

 

Interesting. I wonder whether activated platelets might communicate with RBCs, causing the abnormal deformability observed, or the vascular abnormalities observed.

I'm continually amazed at the discoveries of fairly important organs and functions that no one noticed before now. There's so much still to learn about how the body works. ME probably involves some organ or cellular function still unknown.

 

I am not sure that anything unnoticed is being reported here. Without appearing to be biased I would note that this is a review published in a journal nobody has ever heard of from some people in Morocco. We have known that platelets are involved in signalling at least since I took an interest in immunology forty years ago.

 

Thanks for correcting that. I guess some researchers are a bit behind others, or have some reason for not reading known medical literature. I wonder whether there are still some groups who deny the germ theory, or believe in the "four humours" system. Isn't most traditional Asian medicine based on "four humours"?