By conducting complex diagnoses of immune system stimulation in patients with acute COVID-19, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have managed to spot several cell types that play a key part in the immune reaction to the new coronavirus and the hyperinflammation found in severe cases of the disease. The results are published in the scientific journal Cell Reports Medication.

<span style="color: #ff6600;"><a style="color: #ff6600;" href="https://news.ki.se/new-insights-into-the-immune-systems-role-in-severe-covid-19">The researchers used a combination of advanced methods to analyse the whole composition and role of the immune system up to 14 repeated blood samples from each patient.</a></span>
"This has allowed us to create an unusually comprehensive analysis of immune system activation during severe COVID-19, and we have described several new details of immune response to the virus and its own hyperresponsiveness in severely ill patients," states Dr Brodin.

<em>These findings are valuable in improving the clinical evaluation of patients and in the development of new treatments that modulate and mitigate the over-reaction of the immune system in patients with severe COVID-19."-Petter Brodin, principal investigator, pediatrician and researcher in immunology at the Departmentof Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet</em>

Their results show, among other things, that a kind of white blood cells known as eosinophils, which can be well-documented in asthma but whose function is less understood in respiratory infections in the lungs, play an important role in severe COVID-19. These cells grow in the blood soon before the sufferers suffer a deterioration due to pulmonary hyperinflammation, and ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome), requiring intensive care. Other white blood cells called basophils are located within this study to participate in the evolution of powerful antibody responsesduringthe disease. The researchers have also identified how the immune system recovers in the patients that recovered from severe COVID-19.
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<span style="color: #ff6600;"><a style="color: #ff6600;" href="https://news.ki.se/new-insights-into-the-immune-systems-role-in-severe-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Karolinska Institutet</a></span>

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Rodriguez, L., <em>et al.</em> (2020) Systems-level immunomonitoring from acute to recovery phase of severe COVID-19. <em>Cell Reports Medicine.</em> <span style="color: #ff6600;"><a style="color: #ff6600;" href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2020.100078" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2020.100078</a>.</span>

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