Systems-level immunomonitoring from acute to recovery phase of severe COVID-19

Rodriguez, L.; Pekkarinen, P.; Tadepally, L. K.; Tan, Z.; Rosat Consiglio, C.; Pou, C.; Chen, Y.; Habimana Mugabo, C.; Nguyen Quoc, A.; Nowlan, K.; Strandin, T.; Levanov, L.; Mikes, J.; Wang, J.; Kantele, A.; Hepojoki, J.; Vapalahti, O.; Heinonen, S.; Kekalainen, E.; Brodin, P.

The immune response to SARS-CoV2 is under intense investigation, but not fully understood att this moment. Severe disease is characterized by vigorous inflammatory responses in the lung, often with a sudden onset after 5-7 days of stable disease. Efforts to modulate this hyperinflammation and the associated acute respiratory distress syndrome, rely on the unraveling of the immune cell interactions and cytokines that drive such responses. Systems-level analyses are required to simultaneously capture all immune cell populations and the many protein mediators by which cells communicate. Since every patient analyzed will be captured at different stages of his or her infection, longitudinal monitoring of the immune response is critical. Here we report on a systems-level blood immunomonitoring study of 39 adult patients, hospitalized with severe COVID-19 and followed with up to 14 blood samples from acute to recovery phases of the disease. We describe an IFNg-Eosinophil axis activated prior to lung hyperinflammation and changes in cell-cell coregulation during different stages of the disease. We also map an immune trajectory during recovery that is shared among patients with severe COVID-19.