The Monocyte Chemotactic Protein 1 as a Potential Indicator for SARS-CoV-2 Infected Mild COVID-19 Patients
Cardiff University review immunology/immunity
First Author: Xueyan Xi
Journal/preprint name: research square
DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-71401/v1
Tags: MCP-1, IFN signaling, Mild COVID-19
Summary
The authors compare chemokines and their receptors in mild and severe cases of COVID-19 to healthy controls, suggesting that mild (and severe) disease is associated with increased serum levels of MCP-1, but only severe disease is characterized by increased IL-8 and IP-10. They show that mild cases do have elevated PBMC expression of the MCP-1 receptor CCR2 and that MCP-1 upregulation is associated with reduced levels of IRF3 and a reduced IFN-b response.
Research Highlights
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Mild (and severe) cases of COVID-19 show higher serum levels of MCP-1 than healthy controls
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Levels of IP-10 and IL-8 are high in severe but low in mild cases
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Levels of CCR2 but not CXCR3 and CXCR2 are elevated in PBMC in mild disease compared to healthy controls
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Levels of IRF3 and IFN-b are reduced in mild disease compared to healthy controls
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IRF3 downregulation is negatively correlated with MCP-1
Impact for COVID-19 research:
Low
Methodologies:
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In vitro
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Key Techniques: ELISA, real-time PCR
Limitations:
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The authors focus on the difference in serum chemokines between mild COVID-19 and healthy controls. It would be more useful to investigate differences between mild and severe cases.
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Chemokines were only measured in serum, not in lung fluid.
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The authors conclude that MCP-1 may be an effective indicator in mild patients, which is wrong as MCP-1 levels are elevated in severe patients to the same extend.
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The authors conclude that early use of interferon has a good antiviral therapeutic effect which they did not test. A downregulation of IFN-b in mild cases compared to healthy controls does not necessarily mean increasing IFN-b would be beneficial. The difference of IFN-b in mild compared to severe cases was not investigated.