• Lan Lin, Shanshan Luo, Renjie Qin, Mengling Yang, Xiaobei Wang, Qianqian Yang, Yang Zhang, Quansheng Wang, Rui Zhu, Heng Fan, Haijun Wang, Yu Hu, Lin Wang, and Desheng Hu.
• Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China.
• Clin. Immunol. 2020 Sep 1; 218: 108524.

AbstractThe outbreak of SARS-CoV-2-associated pneumonia, a disease called COVID-19, has caused a pandemic worldwide. To investigate the immune responses after infection of SARS-CoV-2 in non-critical patients may help to better understand the disease progression. We collected 334 confirmed COVID-19 cases including 212 still in hospital with nucleic acid test positive on halfway for SARS-CoV-2 and 122 discharged from hospital, compared specific antibodies, immune cells, and cytokine changes between the hospitalized and discharged patients. The hospitalized patients had a longer illness time compared with discharged patients. Analysis of viral loads explained long-term or persistent infection of SARS-CoV-2, which existed with the median time of 18.5 days of the positive nucleic acid test. Serum analysis showed that the specific anti-N IgG antibody was positive in all detected patients after infection of two weeks. Neutrophils, Monocytes, NK cells, and CD4+ T cells significantly increased, while total lymphocytes and CD8+ T cells decreased from non-critical hospitalized patients after longer-term infection. Further analysis of the cytokines showed that IL-6, TNF-α, IFN-γ, IL-2, IL-4, and IL-10 from the hospitalized patients were significantly higher, indicating a potential of the increased CD4+ T cell differentiation.Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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