Immunophenotypes of anti-SARS-CoV-2 responses associated with fatal COVID-19.
Julij ŠelbBarbara BitežnikUrška Bidovec StojkovićBoštjan RituperKatarina OsolnikPeter KopačPetra SvetinaKristina Cerk PorentaFranc ŠifrerPetra LorberDarinka Trinkaus LeilerTomaž HafnerTina JeričRobert MarčunNika LalekNina FrelihMojca BizjakRok LombarVesna NikolićKatja AdamičKatja MohorčičSanja Grm ZupanIrena ŠarcJerneja DebeljakAna KorenAjda Demšar LuzarMatija RijavecIzidor KernMatjaž FležarAleš RozmanPeter KorosecPublished in: ERJ open research (2022)
By employing unsupervised machine learning we identified multiple anti-SARS-CoV-2 immune response clusters and observed major differences in COVID-19 mortality between these clusters. Two discrete immune pathways may lead to fatal COVID-19. One is driven by impaired or delayed antiviral humoral immunity, independently of hyper-inflammation, and the other may arise through excessive IL-6-mediated host inflammation response, independently of the protective humoral response. Those observations could be explored further for application in clinical practice.