ArticleFrontiers in immunology2023
Epigenetic immune monitoring for COVID-19 disease course prognosis.
Article in Frontiers in immunology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- The Association of SARS-CoV-2 Infection and COVID-19 Vaccination With Sudden Death: An Explorative Review.Cureus · 2025Review
- Longitudinal Immune Profiling in Autoimmune Polyendocrine Syndrome Type 1.Scandinavian journal of immunology · 2025Article
- The Possible Mechanistic Basis of Individual Susceptibility to Spike Protein Injury.Advances in virology · 2025Review
- Saliva as a feasible alternative to blood for interrogation of somatic hematopoietic variants.Blood neoplasia · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: The course of COVID-19 is associated with severe dysbalance of the immune system, causing both leukocytosis and lymphopenia. Immune cell monitoring may be a powerful tool to prognosticate disease outcome. However, SARS-CoV-2 positive subjects are isolated upon initial diagnosis, thus barring standard immune monitoring using fresh blood. This dilemma may be solved by epigenetic immune cell counting. Methods: In this study, we used epigenetic immune cell counting by qPCR as an alternative way of quantitative immune monitoring for venous blood, capillary blood dried on filter paper (dried blood spots, DBS) and nasopharyngeal swabs, potentially allowing a home-based monitoring approach. Results: Epigenetic immune cell counting in venous blood showed equivalence with dried blood spots and with flow cytometrically determined cell counts of venous blood in healthy subjects. In venous blood, we detected relative lymphopenia, neutrophilia, and a decreased lymphocyte-to-neutrophil ratio for COVID-19 patients (n =103) when compared with healthy donors (n = 113). Along with reported sex-related differences in survival we observed dramatically lower regulatory T cell counts in male patients. In nasopharyngeal swabs, T and B cell counts were significantly lower in patients compared to healthy subjects, mirroring the lymphopenia in blood. Naïve B cell frequency was lower in severely ill patients than in patients with milder stages. Conclusions: Overall, the analysis of immune cell counts is a strong predictor of clinical disease course and the use of epigenetic immune cell counting by qPCR may provide a tool that can be used even for home-isolated patients.
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