The immune checkpoints storm in COVID‐19: Role as severity markers at emergency department admission

• Published in: Clinical and Translational Medicine Vol. 11; no. 10; pp. e573 - n/a
• Main Authors: Avendaño‐Ortiz, José, Lozano‐Rodríguez, Roberto, Martín‐Quirós, Alejandro, Terrón, Verónica, Maroun‐Eid, Charbel, Montalbán‐Hernández, Karla, Valentín‐Quiroga, Jaime, García‐Garrido, Miguel Ángel, del Val, Elena Muñoz, del Balzo‐Castillo, Álvaro, Peinado, María, Gómez, Laura, Herrero‐Benito, Carmen, Rubio, Carolina, Casalvilla‐Dueñas, José Carlos, Gómez‐Campelo, Paloma, Pascual‐Iglesias, Alejandro, del Fresno, Carlos, Aguirre, Luis A., López‐Collazo, Eduardo
• Format: Journal Article Web Resource
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.10.2021; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Apoptosis; Biomarkers; Chemokines; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Cytokines; Emergency medical care; Letter to Editor; Lymphocytes; Mortality; Neutrophils; Oxygen saturation; Regression analysis; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Variables
• ISSN: 2001-1326; 2001-1326
• DOI: 10.1002/ctm2.573

[...]their relevance are still being discussed.1 Patients with severe COVID-19 show an impairment of the immune system allowing secondary infections,2-5 and numerous studies have found how T cell polyfunctionality decreases.5, 6 In this regard, immune checkpoints (ICs), a family of molecules known for their ability to modulate immune response and induce T cell exhaustion and apoptosis, become interesting not only as potential early biomarkers of patients’ evolution but also as possible pharmaceutical targets.7 Thus, we recruited 69 patients and 15 healthy volunteers (HVs) from the emergency department (ED) of La Paz University Hospital. Levels of sCD25, sTim-3, Galectin-9 and sPD-L1, but not sCD86, showed a negative correlation with ALC (Supplemental Figures S11A and S12). [...]negative correlation between T cell proliferation and circulating levels of sCD25, sTim-3 and Galectin-9 was also observed (Supplemental Figure S11B-C). Next, using an area under the ROC curve (Area Under the Curve/Receiver Operating Characteristic [AUC/ROC]) analysis, we compared ability as predictor of the ICs, chemokines and cytokines. Variables analysed as potential biomarkers for mortality Variable ROC Univariate logistic regression AUC p-value OR OR IC 95 p-value Age* The asterisk * labels those variables included in the Wald backward stepwise regression model.