Abstract
COVID-19 causes immune perturbations which may persist long-term, and patients frequently report ongoing symptoms for months after recovery. We assessed immune activation at 3-12 months post hospital admission in 187 samples from 63 patients with mild, moderate or severe disease and investigated whether it associates with long COVID. At 3 months, patients with severe disease displayed persistent activation of CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells, based on expression of HLA-DR, CD38, Ki67 and granzyme B, and elevated plasma levels of IL-4, IL-7, IL-17 and TNF-α compared to mild and/or moderate patients. Plasma from severe patients at 3 months caused T-cells from healthy donors to upregulate IL-15Rα, suggesting that plasma factors in severe patients may increase T-cell responsiveness to IL-15-driven bystander activation. Patients with severe disease reported a higher number of long COVID symptoms which did not however, correlate with cellular immune activation/pro-inflammatory cytokines after adjusting for age, sex and disease severity. Our data suggests that long COVID and persistent immune activation may correlate independently with severe disease.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e85009 |
Journal | eLife |
Volume | 12 |
Early online date | 13 Jun 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 13 Jun 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:are grateful to all patients and their families for participating in this study 堀 This work was supported by
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, eLife Sciences Publications Ltd. All rights reserved.
Research Groups and Themes
- Academic Respiratory Unit