Longitudinal characteristics of lymphocyte responses and cytokine profiles in the peripheral blood of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients

Jing Liu; Sumeng Li; Jia Liu; Boyun Liang; Xiaobei Wang; Hua Wang; Wei Li; Qiaoxia Tong; Jianhua Yi; Lei Zhao; Lijuan Xiong; Chunxia Guo; Jin Tian; Jinzhuo Luo; Jinghong Yao; Ran Pang; Hui Shen; Cheng Peng; Ting Liu; Qian Zhang; Jun Wu; Ling Xu; Sihong Lu; Baoju Wang; Zhihong Weng; Chunrong Han; Huabing Zhu; Ruxia Zhou; Helong Zhou; Xiliu Chen; Pian Ye; Bin Zhu; Shengsong He; Yongwen He; Shenghua Jie; Ping Wei; Jianao Zhang; Yinping Lu; Weixian Wang; Li Zhang; Ling Li; Fengqin Zhou; Jun Wang; Ulf Dittmer; Mengji Lu; Yu Hu; Dongliang Yang; Xin Zheng

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.16.20023671 doi: medRxiv preprint IL-7, IL-10, and TNF-α, in the serum of COVID-19 patients [2] . Therefore, we further characterized the kinetic changes of inflammatory cytokine levels, including IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, IFN-γ and TNF-α, in the serum of our patient cohort. Fluctuations in the serum levels of these cytokines in the mild patient group were minor. In contrast, the severe patient group showed more significant fluctuations in the serum levels of these cytokines ( Figure 3 ). All examined cytokines, except IL-6, reached their peak levels in the serum at 3-6 days after disease onset ( Figure 3 ). Both IL-6 and IL-10 levels showed sustained increases in the severe group compared to the mild group ( Figure 3A and 3B) . A decease in serum IL-6 levels in the severe group started at 16 days after disease onset, and IL-10 levels were lowest at 13 days after disease onset ( Figure 3A and 3B). Significant increases in serum IL-2 and IFN-γ levels in the severe group were only observed at 4-6 days after disease onset ( Figure 3C and 3F).