A viral protein, NS2 of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), could provide information to stop pneumonia from causing the body’s exaggerated inflammatory response to respiratory viruses, including SARS Cov-2. Recent study conducted by a team of researchers from Washington State University’s (WSU) College of Veterinary Medicine found that if the virus lacks this protein, the human body’s immune response can destroy the virus before exaggerated inflammation begins. 

The research, published in MBio, laid out the framework to break that cycle by understanding how respiratory viruses, like RSV, persist in the cell, and identified the viral NS2 protein as a key regulator of autophagy, a cellular process that modulates immune defence during virus infection. The study highlighted that in a way, the concept is to disable NS2’s ability to modulate the cell’s immune defense mechanism and it can be used in therapeutics to target that protein and potentially,  the same can be applied to other respiratory viruses like influenza A virus and SARS-CoV-2 as well.