SARS-CoV-2 infection induces mixed M1/M2 phenotype in circulating monocytes and alterations in both dendritic cell and monocyte subsets

  1. Sanja Matic
  2. Suzana Popovic
  3. Predrag Djurdjevic
  4. Danijela Todorovic
  5. Natasa Djordjevic
  6. Zeljko Mijailovic
  7. Predrag Sazdanovic
  8. Dragan Milovanovic
  9. Dejana Ruzic Zecevic
  10. Marina Petrovic
  11. Maja Sazdanovic
  12. Nenad Zornic
  13. Vladimir Vukicevic
  14. Ivana Petrovic
  15. Snezana Matic
  16. Marina Karic Vukicevic
  17. Dejan Baskic

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Abstract

Clinical manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 infection range from mild to critically severe. The aim of the study was to highlight the immunological events associated with the severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection, with an emphasis on cells of innate immunity. Thirty COVID-19 patients with mild/moderate symptoms and 27 patients with severe/critically severe symptoms were recruited from the Clinical Center of Kragujevac during April 2020. Flow cytometric analysis was performed to reveal phenotypic and functional alterations of peripheral blood cells and to correlate them with the severity of the disease. In severe cases, the number of T and B lymphocytes, dendritic cells, NK cells, and HLA-DR-expressing cells was drastically decreased. In the monocyte population proportion between certain subsets was disturbed and cells coexpressing markers of M1 and M2 monocytes were found in intermediate and non-classical subsets. In mild cases decline in lymphocyte number was less pronounced and innate immunity was preserved as indicated by an increased number of myeloid and activated dendritic cells, NK cells that expressed activation marker at the same level as in control and by low expression of M2 marker in monocyte population. In patients with severe disease, both innate and adoptive immunity are devastated, while in patients with mild symptoms decline in lymphocyte number is lesser, and the innate immunity is preserved.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0241097
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.09.332858: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Ethics Committee of Clinical Center Kragujevac approved this study (Nr 01/20-405) and prior initiation written informed consent was obtained from every subject or the patients’ legal representative if he or she was unable to communicate e.g. sedated on mechanical ventilation, according to the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableInclusion criteria were: adults of male or female gender (≥18 years old), SARS-CoV-2 infection confirmed by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and hospitalization.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Data were processed by FlowJo V.10.
    FlowJo
    suggested: (FlowJo, RRID:SCR_008520)
    Commercial statistical program SPSS (version 19.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) was used for data analysis.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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:
    • No conflict of interest statement was detected. If there are no conflicts, we encourage authors to explicit state so.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.09.332858v1 on bioRxiv