In the town of Silverton, Oklahoma, the local high school senior class is preparing for graduation. The high school's vice-principal, Gary Fuller, has asked his two sons, Trey and Donnie, to record messages from the seniors for a time capsule to be opened in 25 years. Elsewhere, Pete, a veteran storm chaser, has been attempting to intercept and film tornadoes using a Tornado Intercept Vehicle nicknamed Titus, but has come up short all year long. Upon learning of a major line of developing storms, the chasers decide to head for Silverton in hopes of filming tornadoes. After arriving in Silverton, the team discovers that the cell they had been chasing has dissipated, but the Silverton cell abruptly strengthens, resulting in a hailstorm and tornado. As the team films, the funnel shifts course and heads for the high school.
At the high school, the weather suddenly sours. The students are marshaled into the school building. In the aftermath of the tornado, shaken students emerge from the damaged building to view the destruction, while Gary sets out to rescue his eldest son Donnie, who had gone to an abandoned paper mill to help his friend Kaitlyn with a project; both were subsequently trapped when the tornado brought the building down on them.
As Pete's storm chase team stops in a small part of town, a tornado takes shape just as Gary and Trey arrive, destroying several buildings. Before the tornado dissipates Gary must save Pete's meteorologist, Allison Stone. Then, Pete's team agree to help Gary get to the paper mill. While en route, another round of tornadoes form and encircle Pete's team, in the process destroying a residential neighborhood and a car lot. An explosion turns one of the tornadoes into a firenado, which Jacob the cameraman tries to film, only to be caught up in the storm and killed. This causes friction in the team, as Pete's concern seems to be more on collecting data than ensuring his team's safety. After recovering their vehicles, Allison leaves with Gary to continue their trip to the paper mill.
In the skies above Silverton, a convergence of two large tornadoes results in a colossal EF-5 tornado that threatens to level the town. The town's citizens have taken shelter at the school, but Pete's team determines that the school's storm shelter will be inadequate. Unable to alert the school's staff with mobile devices, Pete's team rushes to the school. While citizens rush to board school buses, Pete and his team follow the storm, but the last school bus and a handful of cars are cut off from the retreat due to a downed transmission tower.
The storm chasers and school refugees take cover in a storm drain at a construction site, but a truck from the airport that the tornado struck damages one of the storm grates, compromising the shelter. In an attempt to save lives, Pete hands over his research hard drives to Gary, then sacrifices himself by leaving the shelter to move Titus down to the storm grate, to use the vehicle to anchor the storm grate to the concrete face and has the others tie its towline to the crashed truck for support. Titus's equipment proves unable to anchor the vehicle to the ground, and the tornado picks up the vehicle. From the camera turret aboard Titus, Pete observes the funnel of the tornado as the vehicle is lifted above the clouds, fulfilling his dream, before then crashing to the ground, killing him and wrecking Titus. Shortly thereafter, the EF-5 tornado dissipates.
The cytokine storm has captured the attention of the public and the scientific community alike, and while the general notion of an excessive or uncontrolled release of proinflammatory cytokines is well known, the concept of a cytokine storm and the biological consequences of cytokine overproduction are not clearly defined. Cytokine storms are associated with a wide variety of infectious and noninfectious diseases. The term was popularized largely in the context of avian H5N1 influenza virus infection, bringing the term into popular media. In this review, we focus on the cytokine storm in the context of virus infection, and we highlight how high-throughput genomic methods are revealing the importance of the kinetics of cytokine gene expression and the remarkable degree of redundancy and overlap in cytokine signaling. We also address evidence for and against the role of the cytokine storm in the pathology of clinical and infectious disease and discuss why it has been so difficult to use knowledge of the cytokine storm and immunomodulatory therapies to improve the clinical outcomes for patients with severe acute infections.
Cytokine storms are associated with a wide variety of infectious and noninfectious diseases and have even been the unfortunate consequence of attempts at therapeutic intervention (136). Previous reviews have centered on the advent of the concept (29) or its role in graft-versus-host disease (46), multiple sclerosis (89), pancreatitis (94), or multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (145). Though the term was not explicitly stated, recent reviews have addressed potential cellular and molecular mechanisms contributing to the cytokine storm in viral disease (66, 81), some of which specifically focused on influenza (114, 115). In this review, we focus on the cytokine storm in the context of infection, with particular emphasis on respiratory viruses. We also highlight how high-throughput genomic methods are revealing new insights into the cytokine storm. These methods are especially useful for obtaining global views of the complex and intertwined molecular events that attend the upregulation of multiple cytokines.
Acute lung injury (ALI) is a common consequence of a cytokine storm in the lung alveolar environment and systemic circulation and is most commonly associated with suspected or proven infections in the lungs or other organs (121). In humans, ALI is characterized by an acute mononuclear/neutrophilic inflammatory response followed by a chronic fibroproliferative phase marked by progressive collagen deposition in the lung (Fig. 2) (reviewed in reference 96). Pathogen-induced lung injury can progress into ALI or its more severe form, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), as seen with SARS-CoV and influenza virus infections. IL-1β is a key cytokine driving proinflammatory activity in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of patients with lung injury (118). Intense inflammation in the lungs also can have other systemic effects on other organs, as the combination of severe HCl injury in the lungs and mechanical ventilation in rabbits leads to renal dysfunction and evidence of apoptosis in renal tubular epithelial cells (69).
The cytokine storm is best exemplified by severe lung infections, in which local inflammation spills over into the systemic circulation, producing systemic sepsis, as defined by persistent hypotension, hyper- or hypothermia, leukocytosis or leukopenia, and often thrombocytopenia (84). Viral, bacterial, and fungal pulmonary infections all cause the sepsis syndrome, and these etiological agents are difficult to differentiate on clinical grounds. In some cases, persistent tissue damage without severe microbial infection in the lungs also is associated with a cytokine storm and clinical manifestations that mimic sepsis syndrome. In addition to lung infections, the cytokine storm is a consequence of severe infections in the gastrointestinal tract, urinary tract, central nervous system, skin, joint spaces, and other sites.
Studies of patients with severe sepsis due to pulmonary or nonpulmonary infections show characteristic plasma cytokine profiles, which change over time. The acute-response cytokines TNF and IL-1β and the chemotactic cytokines IL-8 and MCP-1 appear in the early minutes to hours after infection, followed by a more sustained increase in IL-6. The anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 appears somewhat later, as the body attempts to control the acute systemic inflammatory response. Plasma samples from a laboratory worker who developed septic shock following the deliberate injection of a large amount of bacterial endotoxin (in an attempt to treat a recently diagnosed tumor) provided insight into this sequence of cytokines following entry of bacterial products into the systemic circulation (138). A similar picture appeared in six healthy volunteers treated with an activating antibody against CD28 during a phase 1 clinical trial (136). IL-6 concentrations in peripheral blood have been used to assess the intensity of systemic cytokine responses in patients with sepsis, because IL-6 production is stimulated by TNF and IL-1β, providing an integrated signal of these two early-response cytokines (1).
The first genomic study to analyze host transcriptional responses to the 1918 pandemic influenza virus was led by Kash and colleagues. Extensive lung damage in mice infected with 1918 virus was accompanied by highly upregulated cytokine and chemokine gene expression (73). Transcriptional activation of innate immune genes was observed as early as 1 day postinfection and remained sustained through the course of infection. These genomic data suggested that the host response enhances 1918 virus pathogenesis by initiating a cytokine storm that contributes to increased disease severity. An overly aggressive innate immune response marked by early expression of proinflammatory cytokine genes was also observed in 1918 virus-infected macaques (28). For example, strong upregulation of IL-6, IL-8, CCL2, and CCL5 cytokine and chemokine gene expression in the lungs was mirrored by elevated levels of IL-8, CCL2, and CCL5 in the sera of infected animals (78). Microarray analysis of lung tissue from macaques infected with H5N1 virus revealed prolonged expression of CCL2, CXCL10, and CXCL9 genes among a gene set of 45 significantly differentially expressed cytokine and chemokine genes (7). The strong interferon and inflammatory transcriptional responses early in infection combined with histopathologic findings for H5N1-infected type II pneumocytes likely account for irreversible lung damage caused by inflammation. IFN signaling appears to play a critical role in restricting highly pathogenic influenza viruses to the lung microenvironment, as IFNAR deficiency in mice results in dissemination of the 1918 virus to brain and spleen (27).
aa06259810