COVID-19 Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 6 pp 7713—7722
Age cohorts stratified according to age-distributions of COVID-19 morbidity statistics identify uniquely age-dependent CD3+CD8+ T-cell lymphocytopenia in COVID-19 patients without comorbidities on admission
- 1 School of Basic Medical Science, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
- 2 Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
- 3 Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
- 4 Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
- 5 Department of Critical Care Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
- 6 School of Pharmacy, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
Received: August 8, 2020 Accepted: February 1, 2021 Published: March 10, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202691How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Jin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
If age boundaries are arbitrarily or roughly defined, age-related analyses can result in questionable findings. Here, we aimed to delineate the uniquely age-dependent immune features of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in a retrospective study of 447 patients, stratified according to age distributions of COVID-19 morbidity statistics into well-defined age-cohorts (2–25y, 26–38y, 39–57y, 58–68y, and 69–79y). Age-dependent susceptibilities and severities of the disease were observed in COVID-19 patients. A comparison of the lymphocyte counts among the five age-groups indicated that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection led to age-dependent lymphopenia. Among the lymphocyte subsets, the CD8+ T cell count alone was significantly and age-dependently decreased (520, 385, 320, 172, and 139 n/μl in the five age-groups, respectively). In contrast, the CD4+ T cell, B cell, and natural killer cell counts did not differ among age-cohorts. Age and CD8+ T cell counts (r=‒0.435, p<0.0001) were negatively correlated in COVID-19 patients. Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 infection age-dependently increased the plasma C-reactive protein concentrations (2.0, 5.0, 9.0, 11.6, and 36.1 mg/L in the five age-groups, respectively). These findings can be used to elucidate the role of CD8+ T cells in age-related pathogenesis and to help develop therapeutic strategies for COVID-19.