Sci Immunol: The body's early immune response may promote the occurrence and progress of severe COVID-19.

September 18, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal ScienceLogy, scientists from the Caroline Institute in Sweden and other institutions found that when an early infection of SARS-CoV-2 occurs, Natural killer cells (NK cells) may be strongly activated, but such activations may not be the same type of activation in the body of moderate to severe COVID-19 patients, a finding that may help researchers understand why some patients experience super-inflammation.
Photo Source: CC0 Public Domain In some cases, SARS-CoV-2 infection can lead to the emergence of severe COVID-19 cases, although this is thought to be driven in part by a faulty congenital immune response, but scientists know little about many aspects of the early immune response that occur in the body at the time of infection.
study, researchers looked at the early response of NK cells to SARS-CoV-2 infection, an immune cell that is important for controlling viral infections in the body.
researchers analyzed blood samples from 10 moderate COVID-19 patients and 17 severe COVID-19 patients (27 patients in total) and collected blood samples from 17 healthy individuals for control, and found that NK cells in the body's blood were strongly activated shortly after infection.
researcher Dr. Niklas Bjorkstrom said the type of NK cell activation in patients with moderate disease may vary greatly from patients with severe illness; it appears that the type of NK cell response in patients with moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection may be a typical NK cell response shared in multiple viral infections.
, however, there are different reactive NK cells in the body of severe COVID-19 patients, who generally express high levels of perforation, NKG2C, and Ksp37 proteins, which the researchers believe may reflect the high presence of so-called adaptive NK cells, and Adaptive NK cells are more targeted than other NK cells, and researchers are currently studying the extent to which the NK cell-mediated immune response observed in critically ill patients contributes to the severity of COVID-19 and to what extent other parts of the response may be beneficial.
researchers said that the results of this paper for early SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent COVID-19 occurrence of the immune response of the characteristics of the study provides a new way of thinking, related research for later scientists to develop improved care and treatment of COVID-19 patients to provide some help and research basis.
study is part of a large-scale Caroline COVID-19 immunographic research project aimed at increasing research and understanding of the immune cell characteristics of the body in PATIENT COVID-19 patients.
original source: Christopher Maucourant, Iva Filipovic, Andrea Ponzetta, et al. Natural killer cell immunotypes related to COVID-19 disease severity, Science Immunology 21 Aug 2020: Vol. 5, Issue 50, eabd6832 doi:10.1126/sciimmunol.abd6832.