Immune cell profiling of patients with COVID-19 with mild, severe and prognosis states revealed by single-cell RNA sequencing

ABSTRACT

Objective: To construct single-cell transcription landscape of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with mild, severe and prognosis states of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and to analyze the relationship between disease progression and host immune response. Methods: Single-cell RNA sequence (scRNA-seq) data of healthy controls and for severe, mild, early recovery stage and later recovery stage PBMCs of patients with COVID-19 were obtained from public databases. After the cells were clustered according to the expression profile of each cell, the cell subtypes of each cluster were determined according to the known cell markers, and the proportion of each cell subtype was counted.The differentially expressed genes of each cell subtype were analyzed. Results: After quality control, the 115 334 PBMCs were classified into 22 cell subsets.Among them, CD14+ monocytes, inflammatory monocytes, naïve B cells and intermediate memory B cells significantly increased in PBMCs of severe patients.The proportion of proliferative CD8+ T/NK cells significantly increased in T cells of severe patients.XCL1+NK cells significantly decrease in PBMCs of severe patients.The proportion of cDC2 cells and pDC cells were significantly increased in PBMCs of recovery patients.With the remission and recovery of the disease, the proportion of NK cells in PBMCs increased gradually.The genes related to leukocyte activation and immune regulation were upregulated in both disease stage and recovery stage. Conclusion: The cell proportion and expression profile of PBMCs in patients with mild, severe and prognosis states of COVID-19 varied greatly. © 2022, Editorial Department of Fudan University Journal of Medical Sciences. All right reserved.