IP-10 and MCP-1 as biomarkers predicting disease severity of COVID-19

Background: COVID-19 is a viral respiratory disease caused by the severe acute respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Patients with this disease may be more prone to venous or arterial thrombosis because of the activation of many factors involved in it, including inflammation, platelet activation and endothelial dysfunction. Therefore, this study focused on coagulation and thrombosis-related indicators in COVID-19, with the hope to find biomarkers that can predict patients’ outcome. Methods: This is a retrospective single-center study involving 74 severe and critically ill COVID-19 patients recruited from the ICU department of the Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, China. The patients were divided into two groups: severe patients and critically ill patients. The serum IP-10, MCP-1 and MIP1a level in both groups was detected using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit. The clinical symptoms, laboratory test results and the outcome of COVID-19 patients were retrospectively analyzed. Results: The serum IP-10 and MCP-1 level in critically ill patients was significantly higher than that in severe patients ( P <0.001). However, no statistical difference in MIP1a between the two groups was found. The analysis of dynamic changes showed that these indicators remarkably increased in patients with poor prognosis. Since the selected patients were severe or critically ill, no significant difference was observed between survival and death. Conclusions: IP-10 and MCP-1 are biomarkers predicting the severity of COVID-19 disease and could be related to the risk of death in COVID-19 patients. In addition, anti-IP-10 antibody treatment may represent a new approach in COVID-19 patients, especially the ones with thrombotic events. Funding Statement: This research was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 81671618 and 81871302), CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (CIFMS 2017-I2M-3- 001 and CIFMS 017-I2M-B&R-01). Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and the informed consent to participate to this study was provided by all the enrolled patients or their families.