Acute eosinophilic pneumonia associated with elevated NKT cell response in COVID-19 patients

Authors: Dong-Min Kim et al Link to paper: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-23607/v1

Journal/ Pre-Print: researchsquare

Key Words: eosinophils, NKT, pneumonia

Research Highlights 

1. The 3 COVID-19 patients tested show an increase in eosinophils and NKT in BALF and sputum

Summary 

In this study samples of BALF, blood and sputum were collected from 3 patients of different ages (39, 79, 79) and sex, that had undergone different treatment and at different stages of disease (mild, acute, convalescent). All patients showed elevated eosinophils, as well as NKT in BALF (where collected) and sputum. The authors speculate that acute eosinophilic pneumonia is associated with COVID-19.

Impact for SARS-CoV2/COVID19 research efforts

Understand the immune response to SARS-CoV2/COVID19

Clinical symptoms and pathogenesis of SARS-Cov2/COVID19

Study Type

· Patient Case study

Strengths and limitations of the paper

Novelty: Elevated eosinophils from early stages of the disease

Standing in the field:

Appropriate statistics: No statistics, one patient per group

Translatability: Remote at best

Main limitations:

· Only one patient per group, limited conclusions can be drawn by this study, that is considered observational case report. Comparisons between patients described are limited, due to different treatments for each patient, different timings for specimen collection, and lack of control samples.

· CD1d tetramers were not used in all figures to specifically identify NKT cells, several surrogate markers were used, so conclusions would need to be revisited with larger cohort and more specific cell profiling.