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- Title
Persistent High Percentage of HLA-DR<sup>+</sup>CD38<sup>high</sup> CD8<sup>+</sup> T Cells Associated With Immune Disorder and Disease Severity of COVID-19.
- Authors
Du, Juan; Wei, Lirong; Li, Guoli; Hua, Mingxi; Sun, Yao; Wang, Di; Han, Kai; Yan, Yonghong; Song, Chuan; Song, Rui; Zhang, Henghui; Han, Junyan; Liu, Jingyuan; Kong, Yaxian
- Abstract
Background: The global outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has turned into a worldwide public health crisis and caused more than 100,000,000 severe cases. Progressive lymphopenia, especially in T cells, was a prominent clinical feature of severe COVID-19. Activated HLA-DR+CD38+ CD8+ T cells were enriched over a prolonged period from the lymphopenia patients who died from Ebola and influenza infection and in severe patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. However, the CD38+HLA-DR+ CD8+ T population was reported to play contradictory roles in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods: A total of 42 COVID-19 patients, including 32 mild or moderate and 10 severe or critical cases, who received care at Beijing Ditan Hospital were recruited into this retrospective study. Blood samples were first collected within 3 days of the hospital admission and once every 3–7 days during hospitalization. The longitudinal flow cytometric data were examined during hospitalization. Moreover, we evaluated serum levels of 45 cytokines/chemokines/growth factors and 14 soluble checkpoints using Luminex multiplex assay longitudinally. Results: We revealed that the HLA-DR+CD38+ CD8+ T population was heterogeneous, and could be divided into two subsets with distinct characteristics: HLA-DR+CD38dim and HLA-DR+CD38hi. We observed a persistent accumulation of HLA-DR+CD38hi CD8+ T cells in severe COVID-19 patients. These HLA-DR+CD38hi CD8+ T cells were in a state of overactivation and consequent dysregulation manifested by expression of multiple inhibitory and stimulatory checkpoints, higher apoptotic sensitivity, impaired killing potential, and more exhausted transcriptional regulation compared to HLA-DR+CD38dim CD8+ T cells. Moreover, the clinical and laboratory data supported that only HLA-DR+CD38hi CD8+ T cells were associated with systemic inflammation, tissue injury, and immune disorders of severe COVID-19 patients. Conclusions: Our findings indicated that HLA-DR+CD38hi CD8+ T cells were correlated with disease severity of COVID-19 rather than HLA-DR+CD38dim population.
- Subjects
COVID-19; T cells; IMMUNOLOGIC diseases; COVID-19 pandemic; SARS-CoV-2; HLA-DR antigens; CD38 antigen; CD8 antigen
- Publication
Frontiers in Immunology, 2021, Vol 12, p1
- ISSN
1664-3224
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3389/fimmu.2021.735125