Immune transcriptomes of highly exposed SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatic seropositive versus seronegative individuals from the Ischgl community
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Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 infection ranges from asymptomatic to severe with lingering symptomatology in some. This prompted investigation of whether or not asymptomatic disease results in measurable immune activation post-infection. Immune activation following asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection was characterized through a comparative investigation of the immune cell transcriptomes from 43 asymptomatic seropositive and 52 highly exposed seronegative individuals from the same community 4–6 weeks following a superspreading event. Few of the 95 individuals had underlying health issues. One seropositive individual reported Cystic Fibrosis and one individual reported Incontinentia pigmenti. No evidence of immune activation was found in asymptomatic seropositive individuals with the exception of the Cystic Fibrosis patient. There were no statistically significant differences in immune transcriptomes between asymptomatic seropositive and highly exposed seronegative individuals. Four positive controls, mildly symptomatic seropositive individuals whose blood was examined 3 weeks following infection, showed immune activation. Negative controls were four seronegative individuals from neighboring communities without COVID-19. All individuals remained in their usual state of health through a five-month follow-up after sample collection. In summary, whole blood transcriptomes identified individual immune profiles within a community population and showed that asymptomatic infection within a super-spreading event was not associated with enduring immunological activation.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.01.20185884: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IACUC: Study population, study design and recruitment: The ethical committee of the Medical University of Innsbruck approved the study (EC numbers: 1100/2020 and 1111/2020), which took place between April 21 and 27, 2020. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources mRNA-seq read quality control was done using Trimmomatic24 (version 0.36) and STAR RNA-seq25 (version STAR 2.5.4a) using 150bp paired-end mode was used to align the reads (hg19). STARsuggested: (STAR, RRID:SCR_015899)Statistical analysis: For comparison of protein levels, … SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.01.20185884: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IACUC: Study population, study design and recruitment: The ethical committee of the Medical University of Innsbruck approved the study (EC numbers: 1100/2020 and 1111/2020), which took place between April 21 and 27, 2020. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources mRNA-seq read quality control was done using Trimmomatic24 (version 0.36) and STAR RNA-seq25 (version STAR 2.5.4a) using 150bp paired-end mode was used to align the reads (hg19). STARsuggested: (STAR, RRID:SCR_015899)Statistical analysis: For comparison of protein levels, single sample pairs were evaluated with the unpaired two-tailed t-test to compare the distributions of two groups with the Welch’s t test to compare the two distributions (GraphPad PRISM version 8.2.0). GraphPad PRISMsuggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations of our study include the translatability of our findings to other populations. There were few underlying health issues in this rural alpine population living at an altitude of 1,400 meters. For example, obesity, which is associated with an inflammatory state and is recognized as risk factor for severe COVID-19 disease22,23, was less than 10% in our study population, differing greatly from higher prevalence rate in other infected populations. Similarly, other defined risk factors for severe disease such as diabetes and chronic kidney disease, were also comparatively low.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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