Age-severity matched cytokine profiling reveals specific signatures in Covid-19 patients

Abstract

A global effort is currently undertaken to restrain the COVID-19 pandemic. Host immunity has come out as a determinant for COVID-19 clinical outcome, and several studies investigated the immune profiling of SARS-CoV-2 infected people to properly direct the clinical management of the disease. Thus, lymphopenia, T-cell exhaustion, and the increased levels of inflammatory mediators have been described in COVID-19 patients, in particular in severe cases 1 . Age represents a key factor in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality 2 . Understanding age-associated immune signatures of patients is therefore important to identify preventive and therapeutic strategies. In this study, we investigated the immune profile of COVID-19 hospitalized patients identifying a distinctive age-dependent immune signature associated with disease severity. Indeed, defined circulating factors - CXCL8, IL-10, IL-15, IL-27 and TNF-α - positively correlate with older age, longer hospitalization, and a more severe form of the disease and may thus represent the leading signature in critical COVID-19 patients.