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Unique Swedish Research Reveals Important Blood Markers
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Two weeks earlier, blood tests can reveal whether the covid patient becomes seriously ill.
Swedish researchers have discovered important markers in a unique study.
– What we can see is that it correlates very clearly with the degree of disease, says immunologist Anna Smed Sörensen.
Since 2015, Anna Smed Sörensen and her research group at the Karolinska Institutet have studied influenza. But this year the covid-19 arrived.
– The flu season turned into a covid pandemic. During the sports holidays, it became clear that we could expect social expansion and that the number of covid patients would increase, he says.
The study included 160 patients from Karolinska y Haga Narakut University Hospital in Solna. It started in March and the patient group was followed once during the summer. The idea is that patients are followed up again at the end of the year and then after one and two years. The group includes patients between 24 and 78 years old.
“Several seriously ill”
The group includes patients who didn’t even know they were sick, even those who ended up in the intensive care unit. Twelve of the 160 died with covid-19.
Photo: TT
They also take tipped samples from the airways.
– It is important not to consider this cohort as directly representative of how the infection is seen in society. Most of the patients have been hospitalized and several of them became seriously ill and some died, but I would not take this mortality rate as representative.
How was the sampling?
– What’s a bit special about our study is that we also take airway samples in addition to blood samples. We finish in the nostril and further into the nose, where we also aspirate some mucus and cells. And then we look at immune cells and various inflammatory proteins.
– It turns out that myeloid suppressor cells, which roll back the immune system, were clearly elevated in the blood of COVID-19 patients, but not in the airways. When you are healthy, you do not have as many cells as this in your blood. They are mainly studied in cancer, where they have been seen to increase in frequency and then can set back or prevent the activity of T cells, an important part of the immune system.
Very high quantities
Swedish researchers found that covid patients had very high amounts of myeloid suppressor cells.
Photo: Elaine Thompson / TT NEWS AGENCY
Myeloid suppressor cells, which suppress the immune system, were clearly elevated in the blood in COVID-19 patients.
– Especially in those patients who are or are seriously ill. The sicker you are, the more of these cells you will have in your blood. But it also seems that the levels of the cells rise a bit before they get sick. So you might have this as a way of trying to predict how sick you will get.
How far in advance could you see this?
– During the first two weeks of the disease, it was observed that the increased frequency of myeloid suppressor cells could be related to a later disease. What we can see is that it correlates very clearly with the severity of the disease. We have also been able to see that myeloid suppressor cells can suppress T cell function. They actually seem to have an immunosuppressive ability.
Trying to slow down
Suppressor cells are a type of super cells?
– Yes, patients who become more seriously ill and some eventually die have a full boost of immune response. The immune system has a lot of gas and at the same time tries to slow down. This could be a brake.
– The immune system is quite dysfunctional. It’s normally a very well regulated system precisely so you don’t get sick as a side effect of a strong immune system, you have a strong immune boost for a short time and then it should come back. That regulation doesn’t seem to work in these covidual patients who become seriously ill.
Anna Smed Sörensen emphasizes that the study has not yet been peer-reviewed and therefore the results should be considered preliminary.
FACTS / Suppressor cells
Suppressor cells are cells of the immune system that have the ability to inhibit the function of other cells. Myeloid suppressor cells are formed in the bone marrow and are part of the immune system. They slow down the activity of T cells, the part of the immune system that, among other things, attacks cells infected by viruses. The person who becomes seriously ill with COVID-19 often does so because the immune system overreacts and begins to damage the body’s own cells.
Source: Nationalencyklopedin och TT
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