From SARS and MERS to COVID-19: a brief summary and comparison of severe acute respiratory infections caused by three hi
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REVIEW
Open Access
From SARS and MERS to COVID-19: a brief summary and comparison of severe acute respiratory infections caused by three highly pathogenic human coronaviruses Zhixing Zhu1†, Xihua Lian2†, Xiaoshan Su1, Weijing Wu1, Giuseppe A. Marraro1,3* and Yiming Zeng1*
Abstract Within two decades, there have emerged three highly pathogenic and deadly human coronaviruses, namely SARSCoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. The economic burden and health threats caused by these coronaviruses are extremely dreadful and getting more serious as the increasing number of global infections and attributed deaths of SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV. Unfortunately, specific medical countermeasures for these hCoVs remain absent. Moreover, the fast spread of misinformation about the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic uniquely places the virus alongside an annoying infodemic and causes unnecessary worldwide panic. SARS-CoV-2 shares many similarities with SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, certainly, obvious differences exist as well. Lessons learnt from SARS-CoV and MERSCoV, timely updated information of SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV, and summarized specific knowledge of these hCoVs are extremely invaluable for effectively and efficiently contain the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV. By gaining a deeper understanding of hCoVs and the illnesses caused by them, we can bridge knowledge gaps, provide cultural weapons for fighting and controling the spread of MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, and prepare effective and robust defense lines against hCoVs that may emerge or reemerge in the future. To this end, the stateof-the-art knowledge and comparing the biological features of these lethal hCoVs and the clinical characteristics of illnesses caused by them are systematically summarized in the review. Keywords: SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, Illness, Biological features, Clinical characteristics
Background Coronaviruses (CoVs) refer to a family of enveloped, positive-sense, single-stranded, and highly diverse RNA viruses [1]. There are four genera (alpha, beta, gamma, and delta), among which α-coronavirus and βcoronavirus attract more attention because of their ability to cross animal-human barriers and emerge to * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] † Zhixing Zhu and Xihua Lian are joint first author 1 Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, Respirology Medicine Centre of Fujian Province, 34 Zhongshanbei Road, Licheng District, Quanzhou, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
become major human pathogens [2]. So far, there are seven documented human coronaviruses (hCoVs), including the beta-genera CoVs, namely Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)-CoV (SARS-CoV), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)-CoV (MERS-CoV), SARS-CoV hCoV-HKU1, and hCoV-OC43 and the αgenera CoVs, which are hCoV-NL63 and hCoV-229E, respectively [1, 3]. Although hCoV-HKU1, hCoV-OC43, hCoV-NL63 and hCoV-229E mainly cause asymptomatic or mild respiratory and gastrointestinal i
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