Highly pathogenic coronavirus N protein aggravates lung injury by MASP-2-mediated complement over-activation

Ting Gao; Mingdong Hu; Xiaopeng Zhang; Hongzhen Li; Lin Zhu; Hainan Liu; Qincai Dong; Zhang Zhang; Zhongyi Wang; Yong Hu; Yangbo Fu; Yanwen Jin; Kaitong Li; Songtao Zhao; Yongjiu Xiao; Shuping Luo; Lufeng Li; Lingfang Zhao; Junli Liu; Huailong Zhao; Yue Liu; Weihong Yang; Jing Peng; Xiaoyu Chen; Ping Li; Yaoning Liu; Yonghong Xie; Jibo Song; Lu Zhang; Qingjun Ma; Xiuwu Bian; Wei Chen; Xuan Liu; Qing Mao; Cheng Cao

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03. 29.20041962 doi: medRxiv preprint significantly increased white blood cell and lymphocyte number were also observed in the next days (Fig. 5C, right) . Hepatic function was gradually improved (Fig. 5D , right, data on day 15 are not available). Flow rate and Fraction of inspiration O2 necessary to maintain SpO2>95% gradually decreased, with the increasing SpO2/FiO2 (Fig. 5B, right) . Chest CT on day 26 of illness (12 days after the 1st dose) also showed alleviated pneumonia (Fig. S4, lower panel) . 5 These data provided the first evidence for a damaging role of C5a in severely affected COVID-19 patients. The two severe patients are significantly benefited from anti-C5a monoclonal antibody therapy, which suggested that an aberrant complement cascade should be considered as a promising therapeutic target of COVID-19.