Cell Reports Medicine (Aug 2020)

Systems-Level Immunomonitoring from Acute to Recovery Phase of Severe COVID-19

  • Lucie Rodriguez,
  • Pirkka T. Pekkarinen,
  • Tadepally Lakshmikanth,
  • Ziyang Tan,
  • Camila Rosat Consiglio,
  • Christian Pou,
  • Yang Chen,
  • Constantin Habimana Mugabo,
  • Ngoc Anh Nguyen,
  • Kirsten Nowlan,
  • Tomas Strandin,
  • Lev Levanov,
  • Jaromir Mikes,
  • Jun Wang,
  • Anu Kantele,
  • Jussi Hepojoki,
  • Olli Vapalahti,
  • Santtu Heinonen,
  • Eliisa Kekäläinen,
  • Petter Brodin

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1, no. 5
p. 100078

Abstract

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Summary: Severe disease of SARS-CoV-2 is characterized by vigorous inflammatory responses in the lung, often with a sudden onset after 5–7 days of stable disease. Efforts to modulate this hyperinflammation and the associated acute respiratory distress syndrome rely on the unraveling of the immune cell interactions and cytokines that drive such responses. Given that every patient is captured at different stages of infection, longitudinal monitoring of the immune response is critical and systems-level analyses are required to capture cellular interactions. Here, we report on a systems-level blood immunomonitoring study of 37 adult patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and followed with up to 14 blood samples from acute to recovery phases of the disease. We describe an IFNγ-eosinophil axis activated before lung hyperinflammation and changes in cell-cell co-regulation during different stages of the disease. We also map an immune trajectory during recovery that is shared among patients with severe COVID-19.

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