Immune Cell Profiling of COVID-19 Patients in the Recovery Stage by Single-Cell Sequencing

Wen Wen; Wenru Su; Hao Tang; Wenqing Le; Xiaopeng Zhang; Yingfeng Zheng; XiuXing Liu; Lihui Xie; Jianmin Li; Jinguo Ye; Xiuliang Cui; Yushan Miao; Depeng Wang; Jiantao Dong; Chuan-Le Xiao; Wei Chen; Hongyang Wang

Inflammation is a vital part of the immune system's response to COVID-19 invasion; previous and latest studies have reported significantly higher levels of inflammatory cytokines associated with disease severity in SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 patients [22, 23] . Among the various inflammatory cells, monocytes and their subsets (including classical, intermediate, and non-classical monocytes) may play a critical role because they are known to fuel inflammation [24] [25] [26] [27] . In our study, compared with the HCs, ERS patients demonstrated a significantly higher ratio of monocytes, and these cells expressed higher levels of inflammatory genes. Intriguingly, the ratio of classical CD14 + monocytes was high in ERS but remained normal in LRS. Furthermore, CD14 + IL1β monocytes, which were absent in HCs, could be observed in ERS, and they declined in number in LRS. Notably, our cell-to-cell interaction analysis indicated that IL1β, CSF1, IL6, and CSF2 may be associated with All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.