How much statins to fight Cytokine Storm

If you have a cytokine storm, your organs are failing and outside of the ICU you are dead absolutely for certain.

If you are in the ICU, the doctors are arguing heatedly over your care and trying all sorts of very specialist treatments, Interleukins, interferon, steroids, anti-inflammatorys, ahtihistamines and you could survive if very, very lucky.

The term cytokine storm was first coined to describe a feature of graft V host disease (rejecting a transplant). It happens very occasionally in infections as well, if the immune system is in full on overdrive.

Although these reactions are termed a cytokine storm, the very term cytokine storm covers a wide range of conditions, the symptoms are the same and equally deadly, but on a cellular level every storm is different.

Cytokines are inflammatory proteins produced in all cases of infection to elicit and control the counter-attack. They are different for each infectious agent and vary somewhat according to the genetics of the host. Before the doctors start the arguments they run a battery of tests to determine the general composition of the cytokines. Only then can they hazard a guess at the right treatment options. Get the wrong ones and the patient dies. Get the right ones and you can get lucky and save the occasional patient.

Statins are not on the list of substances used as far as I am aware, I could be wrong, but even if I am, the treatment is far too specialised to be done outside the ICU.

In theory, you could head off a cytokine storm before it gets fully underway, but that would interfere with the immune response to the pathogen and could just as easily kill the patient that way.

I'm all for tourniquets, breathing seesaws, cpr and loads of other rough-and-ready home remedies in an emergency. But not with this response, you would kill your patient for certain.

Oh well worth a try...I always try to be prepared! Not on this one!

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