Authors: Jihoon W. Lee, Yapeng Su, Priyanka Baloni, Daniel Chen, Ana Jimena Pavlovitch-Bedzyk, Dan Yuan, Venkata R. Duvvuri, Rachel H. Ng, Jongchan Choi, Jingyi Xie, Rongyu Zhang, Kim Murray, Sergey Kornilov, Brett Smith, Andrew T. Magis, Dave S. B. Hoon, Jennifer J. Hadlock, Jason D. Goldman, Nathan D. Price, Raphael Gottardo, Mark M. Davis, Leroy Hood, Philip D. Greenberg, James R. Heath
Summary: A better understanding of the metabolic alterations in immune cells during severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection may elucidate the wide diversity of clinical symptoms experienced by individuals with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Here, we report the metabolic changes associated with the peripheral immune response of 198 individuals with COVID-19 through an integrated analysis of plasma metabolite and protein levels as well as single-cell multiomics analyses from serial blood draws collected during the first week after clinical diagnosis. We document the emergence of rare but metabolically dominant T cell subpopulations and find that increasing disease severity correlates with a bifurcation of monocytes into two metabolically distinct subsets. This integrated analysis reveals a robust interplay between plasma metabolites and cell-type-specific metabolic reprogramming networks that is associated with disease severity and could predict survival.
Source: Nature Biotechnology, Sept. 6, 2021