CXCL10 and COVID-19: Dysregulation of these COVID-19 acute phase pro-inflammatory genes can greatly induce a detrimental effect by prolonging the inflammatory response, delayed viral clearance and thus increasing the risk of severe and prolonged COVID-19 symptoms (Coperchini et al., 2021) For example, only augmented CXCL10 plasma levels in COVID-19 infected patients were found to be significantly correlated with the viral load and disease severity (Guo et al., 2022a; Guo et al., 2022b) and higher mortality, especially in males (Draxler et al., 2017).