Center of Excellence for Inflammation, Infectious Disease and Immunity, James H. Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA.
Division of Infectious, Inflammatory and Immunologic Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, Quillen College of Medicine, ETSU, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA.
Proteomics Clin Appl. 2022 Sep;16(5):e2200031. doi: 10.1002/prca.202200031. Epub 2022 Aug 15.
While the majority of COVID-19 patients fully recover from the infection and become asymptomatic, a significant proportion of COVID-19 survivors experience a broad spectrum of symptoms lasting weeks to months post-infection, a phenomenon termed "post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC)." The aim of this study is to determine whether inflammatory proteins are dysregulated and can serve as potential biomarkers for systemic inflammation in COVID-19 survivors.
We determined the levels of inflammatory proteins in plasma from 22 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) long haulers (COV-LH), 22 COVID-19 asymptomatic survivors (COV-AS), and 22 healthy subjects (HS) using an Olink proteomics assay and assessed the results by a beads-based multiplex immunoassay.
Compared to HS, we found that COVID-19 survivors still exhibited systemic inflammation, as evidenced by significant changes in the levels of multiple inflammatory proteins in plasma from both COV-LH and COV-AS. CXCL10 was the only protein that significantly upregulated in COV-LH compared with COV-AS and HS.
Our results indicate that several inflammatory proteins remain aberrantly dysregulated in COVID-19 survivors and CXCL10 might serve as a potential biomarker to typify COV-LH. Further characterization of these signature inflammatory molecules might improve the understanding of the long-term impacts of COVID-19 and provide new targets for the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 survivors with PASC.
虽然大多数 COVID-19 患者从感染中完全康复并无症状，但相当一部分 COVID-19 幸存者在感染后数周到数月内会经历一系列广泛的症状，这种现象被称为“COVID-19 后急性后遗症（PASC）”。本研究旨在确定炎症蛋白是否失调，并能否作为 COVID-19 幸存者全身炎症的潜在生物标志物。
我们使用 Olink 蛋白质组学测定法测定了 22 名冠状病毒病 2019（COVID-19）长期幸存者（COV-LH）、22 名 COVID-19 无症状幸存者（COV-AS）和 22 名健康受试者（HS）的血浆中炎症蛋白水平，并通过基于珠子的多重免疫测定法评估了结果。
与 HS 相比，我们发现 COVID-19 幸存者仍表现出全身炎症，这表现在 COV-LH 和 COV-AS 血浆中多种炎症蛋白水平的显著变化。与 COV-AS 和 HS 相比，COV-LH 中仅 CXCL10 显著上调。
我们的结果表明，COVID-19 幸存者中的几种炎症蛋白仍然异常失调，CXCL10 可能是 COV-LH 的潜在生物标志物。对这些特征性炎症分子的进一步表征可能有助于了解 COVID-19 的长期影响，并为 COVID-19 幸存者的 PASC 的诊断和治疗提供新的靶点。
