Response to a press release that could be read to mean that glucosamine might exacerbate the "cytokine storms" seen in COVID-19

Tonight I came across this press release--https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/aaft-hbg041320.php--in which one of the authors of a 2020 paper on the influenza A virus said that their findings might be applicable to help understand why diabetes can lead to higher COVID-19 mortality. Unfortunately, one could come away from reading the press release with an impression that because glucosamine resulted in increased levels of inflammatory cytokines in mice infected with influenza A, glucosamine might do the same to COVID-19 patients. Here is a link to the actual study, "O-GlcNAc transferase promotes influenza A virus–induced cytokine storm by targeting interferon regulatory factor–5" by Wang et al.: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/16/eaaz7086

While glucose metabolism issues can undoubtedly promote a state of inflammation in the body via a number of mechanisms, the Wang study does not appear to otherwise apply to COVID-19. Cytokine storms can result from a wide variety of infectious and noninfectious diseases. (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3294426/.) In 2017, Wang and his colleagues discovered that influenza A virus induces cytokine storms via interferon regulatory factor–5 (IRF5), (see https://www.jbc.org/content/292/52/21291), and their 2020 paper states, "results suggest that IRF5 is at least the major, if not the only, functional [O-GlcNAc transferase] target that promotes [influenza A virus]-regulated cytokine storm." A search in the PubMed database turns up 0 results for a search on "IRF5" combined with "COVID-19," even though there are currently 9509 papers about COVID-19 in the PubMed database.

Viruses differ. A study about influenza A virus does not necessarily advance our understanding of a different virus such as COVID-19.

I think that glucosamine is more likely to calm rather than exacerbate a COVID-19 cytokine storm because of its role in protecting cartilage. (See my previous post, https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2020/05/working-hypothesis-of-how-cartilage.html.) Moreover, glucosamine can suppress secretion of the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 in bronchial epithelial cells (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001429991000186X) and even keep interleukin-6 from binding to some cells (see https://cancerci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2867-14-45). Lastly, the extremely low COVID-19 case and death rates in regions that frequently eat fermented shrimp paste--the only widely eaten food source of appreciable, bioavailable glucosamine--are strong evidence in support of a hypothesis that glucosamine provides a net benefit to those infected with COVID-19.