Author(s):
Pedroso, Rodrigo B. ; Torres, Lícia ; Ventura, Lucas Araújo ; Camatta, Giovanna Caliman ; Mota, Catarina ; Mendes, Ana Catarina ; Ribeiro, Filipa ; Guimarães, Henrique Cerqueira ; Barbuto, Rafael Calvão ; Caixeta, Felipe ; Nascimento, Leandro Souza ; Oliveira, Mariana Almeida ; Martins, Vinícius Dantas ; Silveira-Nunes, Gabriela ; Tupinambás, Unaí ; Teixeira-Carvalho, Andrea ; Graca, Luis ; Faria, Ana Maria Caetano
Date: 2024
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/96232
Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
Subject(s): COVID-19; T-cell exhaustion; T-cell senescence; Immunosenescence; Inflammaging; Inflammatory cytokines
Description
Risk factors for the development of severe COVID-19 include several comorbidities, but age was the most striking one since elderly people were disproportionately affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection. Among the reasons for this markedly unfavorable response in the elderly, immunosenescence and inflammaging appear as major drivers of this outcome. A finding that was also notable was that hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19 have an accumulation of senescent T cells, suggesting that immunosenescence may be aggravated by SARS-CoV-2 infection. The present work was designed to examine whether these immunosenescence changes are characteristic of COVID-19 and whether it is dependent on disease severity using cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Our cross-sectional data show that COVID-19, but not other respiratory infections, rapidly increased cellular senescence and exhaustion in CD4 and CD8 T cells during early infection. In addition, longitudinal analyses with patients from Brazil and Portugal provided evidence of increased frequencies of senescent and exhausted T cells over a 7-d period in patients with mild/moderate and severe COVID-19. Altogether, the study suggests that accelerated immunosenescence in CD4 and especially CD8 T-cell compartments may represent a common and unique outcome of SARS-CoV2 infection.
