Comparative study of the lymphocyte change between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 pneumonia cases suggesting uncontrolled inflammation might not be the main reason of tissue injury

Yishan Zheng; Zhen Huang; Guoping Ying; Xia Zhang; Wei Ye; Zhiliang Hu; Chunmei Hu; Hongxia Wei; Yi Zeng; Yun Chi; Cong Cheng; Feishen Lin; Hu Lu; Lingyan Xiao; Yan Song; Chunming Wang; Yongxiang Yi; Lei Dong

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02. 19.20024885 doi: medRxiv preprint subgroups count and biochemical indexes relating to organ injury in both COVID-19 (Table 3) and non-2019-nCoV-infected pneumonia patients (Table 4 ). In COVID-19 patients, LDH, AST, and sodium ion concentration showed significant correlations (P<0.05) with total lymphocyte and all lymphocyte subsets count; meanwhile, creatinine kinase (CK), total bilirubin, eGFR, and potassium ion concentration only exhibited significant correlations with part of lymphocyte subpopulation count (Table 3 ). Among the lymphocyte subsets, CD4+ Th cells count showed significant correlations with most biochemical indices (Fig 1) . In contrast, no significant correlation was found between biochemical indexes and the counts for monocytes and neutrophils. Meanwhile, LDH only negatively correlated with CD3+ T cell count and CD8+ T cell count and AST exhibited with CD8+ T cell count in non-2019-nCoV-infected pneumonia patients (Table 4 ). In general, correlation analysis implied a significant negative correlation between lymphocyte subsets count and organ injury degree in COVID-19 patients rather than non-2019-nCoV-infected pneumonia patients.