Longitudinal characteristics of lymphocyte responses and cytokine profiles in the peripheral blood of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients

By Jing Liu, Sumeng Li, Jia Liu, B. Liang, Xiaobei Wang, Hua Wang, Wei Li, Q. Tong, Jianhua Yi, Lei Zhao and 40 more. medRxiv, 2020

1,633 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background: The dynamic changes of lymphocyte subsets and cytokines profiles of patients with novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and their correlation with the disease severity remain unclear. Method: Peripheral blood samples were longitudinally collected from 40 confirmed COVID-19 patients and examined for lymphocyte subsets by flow cytometry and cytokine profiles by specific immunoassays. Findings: Of the 40 COVID-19 patients enrolled, 13 severe cases showed significant and sustained decreases in lymphocyte counts but increases in neutrophil counts than 27 mild cases. Further analysis demonstrated significant decreases in the counts of T cells, especially CD8 + T cells, as well as increases in IL-6, IL-10, IL-2 and IFN-γ levels in the peripheral blood in the severe cases compared to those in the mild cases. T cell counts and cytokine levels in severe COVID-19 patients who survived the disease gradually recovered at later time points to levels that were comparable to those of the mild cases. Moreover, the neutrophil-to-CD8+ T cell ratio (N8R) were identified as the most powerful prognostic factor affecting the prognosis for severe COVID-19. Conclusion: The degree of lymphopenia and a proinflammatory cytokine storm is higher in severe COVID-19 patients than in mild cases, and is associated with the disease severity. N8R may serve as a useful prognostic factor for early identification of severe COVID-19 cases.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/262064c4ab0cc65af497d724df4c7f74102857d6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Infectious Diseases

1. Bo Huang
2. Youhai H. Chen
3. X. Wan
4. Jinyan Liu
5. Zhixin Zhang
6. Yi Zhang
7. Shasha Liu

In Neurology

1. Bo Huang
2. Youhai H. Chen
3. X. Wan
4. Jinyan Liu
5. Zhixin Zhang
6. Yi Zhang
7. Shasha Liu

Citations in the corpus

• Immunology of COVID-19: Current State of the Science (2020, neutral): “IL-6 Associated with disease severity (hospitalization and ICU admission) and poor prognosis (Chen et al., 2020g; Huang et al., 2020b; Liu et al., 2020b, 2020f; Wang et al., 2020b).”
• Robust T Cell Immunity in Convalescent Individuals with Asymptomatic or Mild COVID-19 (2020, neutral): “This finding has been reported previously (He et al., 2020a; Liu et al., 2020).”
• Diabetes mellitus is associated with increased mortality and severity of disease in COVID-19 pneumonia – A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression (2020, neutral): “[3, 8, [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] 9, [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] There were a total of 6452 patients from 30 studies.”
• SARS-CoV-2 and viral sepsis: observations and hypotheses (2020, background): “16, 17 Like in a severe influenza infection, the cytokine storm might play an important role in the immunopathology of COVID-19.”
• COVID-19 and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents (2020, neutral): “Evidence has shown that a dysregulated innate immune response and a subsequent cytokine storm, 70,74–80 and endothelial damage, 81,82 might play a role in the clinical manifestation of severe COVID­19 cases, leading to acute lung injury, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and multiple organ…”
• COVID-19: immunopathogenesis and Immunotherapeutics (2020, background): “Further analysis showed a significant decrease in T cell counts, especially CD8 T cells in severe cases compared with mild cases.(15) Qin et al.”