Severe COVID-19 is marked by a dysregulated myeloid cell compartment
Published in Cell, 2020
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a mild to moderate respiratory tract infection, however, a subset of patients progress to severe disease and respiratory failure. The mechanism of protective immunity in mild forms and the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 associated with increased neutrophil counts and dysregulated immune responses remain unclear. In a dual-center, two-cohort study, we combined single-cell RNA-sequencing and single-cell proteomics of whole-blood and peripheral-blood mononuclear cells to determine changes in immune cell composition and activation in mild versus severe COVID-19 (242 samples from 109 individuals) over time. HLA-DRhiCD11chi inflammatory monocytes with an interferon-stimulated gene signature were elevated in mild COVID-19. Severe COVID-19 was marked by occurrence of neutrophil precursors, as evidence of emergency myelopoiesis, dysfunctional mature neutrophils, and HLA-DRlo monocytes. Our study provides detailed insights into the systemic immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and reveals profound alterations in the myeloid cell compartment associated with severe COVID-19.
Recommended citation: Jonas Schulte-Schrepping, Nico Reusch, Daniela Paclik, Kevin Baßler, Stephan Schlickeiser, Bowen Zhang, Benjamin Krämer, Tobias Krammer, Sophia Brumhard, Lorenzo Bonaguro*, Elena De Domenico, Daniel Wendisch, Martin Grasshoff, Theodore S Kapellos, Michael Beckstette, Tal Pecht, Adem Saglam, Oliver Dietrich, Henrik E Mei, Axel R Schulz, Claudia Conrad, Désirée Kunkel, Ehsan Vafadarnejad, Cheng-Jian Xu, Arik Horne, Miriam Herbert, Anna Drews, Charlotte Thibeault, Moritz Pfeiffer, Stefan Hippenstiel, Andreas Hocke, Holger Müller-Redetzky, Katrin-Moira Heim, Felix Machleidt, Alexander Uhrig, Laure Bosquillon de Jarcy, Linda Jürgens, Miriam Stegemann, Christoph R Glösenkamp, Hans-Dieter Volk, Christine Goffinet, Markus Landthaler, Emanuel Wyler, Philipp Georg, Maria Schneider, Chantip Dang-Heine, Nick Neuwinger, Kai Kappert, Rudolf Tauber, Victor Corman, Jan Raabe, Kim Melanie Kaiser, Michael To Vinh, Gereon Rieke, Christian Meisel, Thomas Ulas, Matthias Becker, Robert Geffers, Martin Witzenrath, Christian Drosten, Norbert Suttorp, Christof von Kalle, Florian Kurth, Kristian Händler, Joachim L Schultze, Anna C Aschenbrenner, Yang Li, Jacob Nattermann, Birgit Sawitzki, Antoine-Emmanuel Saliba, Leif Erik Sander, Angel Angelov, Robert Bals, Alexander Bartholomäus, Anke Becker, Daniela Bezdan, Ezio Bonifacio, Peer Bork, Thomas Clavel, Maria Colome-Tatche, Andreas Diefenbach, Alexander Dilthey, Nicole Fischer, Konrad Förstner, Julia-Stefanie Frick, Julien Gagneur, Alexander Goesmann, Torsten Hain, Michael Hummel, Stefan Janssen, Jörn Kalinowski, René Kallies, Birte Kehr, Andreas Keller, Sarah Kim-Hellmuth, Christoph Klein, Oliver Kohlbacher, Jan O Korbel, Ingo Kurth, Kerstin Ludwig, Oliwia Makarewicz, Manja Marz, Alice McHardy, Christian Mertes, Markus Nöthen, Peter Nürnberg, Uwe Ohler, Stephan Ossowski, Jörg Overmann, Silke Peter, Klaus Pfeffer, Anna R Poetsch, Alfred Pühler, Nikolaus Rajewsky, Markus Ralser, Olaf Rieß, Stephan Ripke, Ulisses Nunes da Rocha, Philip Rosenstiel, Philipp Schiffer, Eva-Christina Schulte, Alexander Sczyrba, Oliver Stegle, Jens Stoye, Fabian Theis, Janne Vehreschild, Jörg Vogel, Max von Kleist, Andreas Walker, Jörn Walter, Dagmar Wieczorek, John Ziebuhr. (2020). "Severe COVID-19 is marked by a dysregulated myeloid cell compartment" Cell. 182(6)
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