Evaluation of I-TAC as a potential early plasma marker to differentiate between critical and non-critical COVID-19

Authors:

Yushan Zhang1, Chao Xu2, Nelson I. Agudelo Higuita3, Resham Bhattacharya4,5, Jennifer Holter Chakrabarty3 and Priyabrata Mukherjee1,5
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Affiliations:

1 Department of Pathology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73104, USA.

2 Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73104, USA.

3 Department of Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73104, USA.

4 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73104, USA.

5 Peggy and Charles Stephenson Cancer Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73104, USA.

Keywords: 

COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, I-TAC, Gasdermin B, pyroptosis, disease severity.

Abbreviations:

COVID-19 – coronavirus disease 2019,

SARS-CoV-2 – severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.

Corresponding Author(s):

Resham Bhattacharya, PhD, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Genecology; Oklahoma TSET Cancer Research Scholar, Stanton L. Young Biomedical Research Center, Suite # 1409, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, 975 N.E., 10th Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73104; Phone: 405-271-1133; Resham-Bhattacharya@ouhsc.edu Jennifer Holter Chakrabarty, MD, Professor of Medicine; Presbyterian Health Foundation Presidential Professor; Inasmuch Foundation Chair in Cancer; Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program, Hematology/Oncology; Phone: 405-271-4022 Ext48397; Fax: 405-271-4221; Jholter2@ouhsc.edu

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare no competing interests.

Please cite this article as:

Yushan Zhang, Chao Xu, Nelson I. Agudelo Higuita, Resham Bhattacharya, Jennifer H. Chakrabarty and Priyabrata Mukherjee (2021). Evaluation of I-TAC as a potential early plasma marker to differentiate between critical and non-critical COVID-19. Cell Stress 6(1): 6-16. doi: 10.15698/cst2022.01.262

© 2021 Zhang et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant global health and economic consequences. There is an unmet need to define a molecular fingerprint of severity of the disease that may guide an early, rational and directed intervention preventing severe illness. We collected plasma from patients with moderate (nine cases), severe (22 cases) and critical (five cases) COVID-19 within three days of hospitalization (approximately one week after symptom onset) and used a cytokine antibody array to screen the 105 cytokines included in the array. We found that I-TAC, IP-10, ST2 and IL-1ra were significantly upregulated in patients with critical disease as compared to the non-critical (moderate and severe combined). ELISA further quantified I-TAC levels as 590.24±410.89, 645.35±517.59 and 1613.53±1010.59 pg/ml in moderate, severe and critical groups, respectively. Statistical analysis showed that I-TAC levels were significantly higher in patients with critical disease when compared with moderate (p = 0.04), severe (p = 0.03) or the combined non-critical (p = 0.02) group. Although limited by the low sample numbers, this study may suggest a role of I-TAC as a potential early marker to discriminate between critical and non-critical COVID-19 cases. Such knowledge is urgently needed for appropriate allocation of resources and to serve as a platform for future research towards early interventions that could mitigate disease severity and save lives.