IL6 and acute respiratory distress syndrome: Thus, SARS-CoV-2 infection activates the innate immune system and, if this process becomes uncontrolled, it can result in the dysregulation of cytokine production (Figure 2), involving increased production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, namely interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-8, TNF- a and others, which contribute to the development of ARDS (Fu et al., 2020).