Monocyte CD169 expression as a biomarker in the early diagnosis of COVID-19
clinical diagnostics
Authors: Bedin et al.
Journal/ Pre-Print:MedRxiv
Tags: Clinical, Diagnostics
Research Highlights
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Monocytic CD169 (mCD169) was overexpressed in COVID-19 patients, making it a potential early biomarker
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mCD169 correlated with viral replication rate and IFNa levels
Summary
Authors of this study assessed 53 adult patients (32 COVID-19 positive, 21 with another infection) and the expression of CD169 on their monocytes, which was overexpressed in COVID-19 positive patients. Expression of mCD169 correlated with thrombocytopenia and IFNα levels in the plasma, as well as with the proxy of viral replication (cycle time detection in SARS-CoV-2 PCR). Furthermore, they reported that mCD169 seemed to be linked to active infection before seroconversion. They suggest that mcD169 expression may serve as a useful biomarker, however due to low numbers of patients its usefulness as severity prognosis could not be assessed.
Impact for SARS-CoV2/COVID19 research efforts
Develop diagnostic tools for SARS-CoV2/COVID19: Identification of mCD169 as a potential biomarker for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis
Study Type
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Patient Case study
Strengths and limitations of the paper
Novelty: First evaluation of CD169 expression on monocytes in the context of COVID-19.
Standing in the field: Not controversial. Overexpression of CD169 on monocytes has been previously detected in other viral infections e.g. influenza. CD169 expression itself is enhanced by type I IFN, thus, its overexpression in viral infections with high prevalence of IFN is logical.
Appropriate statistics: Mostly appropriate, however not clearly stated in figure legends. For correlation analysis, full statistics was not shown (e.g. p-value missing). No statistics in Figure 2 as it shows individual patients, however, it might be beneficial to group the data together and perform statistical analysis of the results.
Viral model used: SARS-CoV-2
Translatability: Potential of using for viral infection testing in combination with another biomarker or a complementary method.
Main limitations:
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Small sample size.
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CD169 increased in other viral infections, therefore, CD169 might be useful only as one biomarker complementing another method.
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Insufficient number to make predictions about disease outcome based on expression level of CD169
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What happens to the negative qPCR diagnosis that turns out to be infected with SARS-CoV2? Do they not present CD169 at the outset?
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Further investigation of mechanical/functional role of mCD169.
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Not clear how this method improves the current qPCR for diagnostic.