CTI: In-depth disclosure of the immune response characteristics of COVID-19 patients

November 16, 2020 // -- One of the most confusing questions about the global COVID-19 pandemic is why people are showing such diverse reactions.
some people do not have any symptoms and are referred to as "silent transmitters", while some COVID-19 patients have an extreme immune response that requires intensive care.
known age and underlying health conditions increase the risk of severe reactions, it is not yet possible to explain the underlying causes of immune response hyperincensmation in some people, although this may be due to a combination of factors.
To study immune system variants that might explain the range of responses, researchers from the Belgian Centre for ViB Encephalopathy, the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Babbraham Institute in the United Kingdom compared the responses of mild, moderate or severe patients to COVID-19 in a control group of healthy individuals.
(Photo source: www.pixabay.com) their study was published in the journal Clinical and Translational Immunology.
Professor Adrian Liston, senior team leader at the Babham Institute in the UK, explained: "One of the main motivations for our study was to understand the complexity of the immune system response that occurs in COVID-19 and to identify signs of serious diseases we believe that open data sharing is key to overcoming this challenge, so the data set was created to allow others to independently explore and analyze the data.
" researchers specifically studied the presence of T-cells - immune cells have different functions, depending on their subsype, "cytotoxic" T cells can directly kill infected cells, while other "assisted" T-cell types can regulate the role of other immune cells.
based on T-cell recognition markers, cell activation markers and cytokine cell signaling molecules, the researchers used fluid cytometics to isolate interested cells from the participants' blood.
, there was little difference in T-cell response in the blood of severe COVID-19 patients compared to healthy volunteers.
this is the opposite of what you usually see after an influenza virus infection.
, however, the researchers found that T-cells increased, producing a cell inflammation inhibitor called lecytokine 10 (IL-10).
the production of IL-10 is a hallmark of active regulatory T cells present in tissues such as the lungs.
although rare in healthy individuals, researchers were able to detect a significant increase in the number of these cells in patients with severe COVID-19.
the results suggest that monitoring IL-10 levels could serve as a warning of the disease's progress, but the researchers note that large-scale studies are needed to confirm these findings.
() Source: Disecting the immune features of severe COVID-19 responses Original source: Julika Neumann et al, Increased IL-10-producing regulatory T cells are featured of severe cases of COVID-19, Clinical and Translational Immunology (2020). DOI: 10.1002/cti2.1204