G. H. Meftahi¹, Z. Bahari^1,2, Z. Jangravi^3,4*, M. Iman^3,5

¹Neuroscience Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
²Department of Physiology and Medical Physics, Faculty of Medicine, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
³Nanobiotechnology Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
⁴Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
⁵Department of Pharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran;
*e-mail: jangraviz89@gmail.com

Received: 31 August 2020; Accepted: 17 December 2020

In early December 2019, the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) began in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. Since then, it has propagated rapidly and turned into a major global crisis due to the high virus spreading. Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is considered as a defining cause of  the death cases. Cytokine storm and oxidative stress are the main players of ARDS development during respiratory virus infections. In this review, we discussed molecular mechanisms of a fatal vicious circle between oxidative stress and cytokine storm during COVID-19 infection. We also described how aging can inflame the vicious circle.