ArticleFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology2023
Identification of natural killer markers associated with fatal outcome in COVID-19 patients.
Article in Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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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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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- NKG2A+ NK cell cytotoxicity of Epstein-Barr virus infected B cells is mediated through the NKG2D and NKp30 activating receptors.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2026Article
- Investigation ofInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Elevated levels of cell-free NKG2D-ligands modulate NKG2D surface expression and compromise NK cell function in severe COVID-19 disease.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Article
- Natural killer (NK) cells in bipolar disorders.Neuroscience applied · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
21 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Increasing evidence has shown that coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) severity is driven by a dysregulated immunological response. Previous studies have demonstrated that natural killer (NK) cell dysfunction underpins severe illness in COVID-19 patients, but have lacked an in-depth analysis of NK cell markers as a driver of death in the most critically ill patients. Methods: We enrolled 50 non-vaccinated hospitalized patients infected with the initial virus or the alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2 with moderate or severe illness, to evaluate phenotypic and functional features of NK cells. Results: Here, we show that, consistent with previous studies, evolution NK cells from COVID-19 patients are more activated, with the decreased activation of natural cytotoxicity receptors and impaired cytotoxicity and IFN-γ production, in association with disease regardless of the SARS-CoV-2 strain. Fatality was observed in 6 of 17 patients with severe disease; NK cells from all of these patients displayed a peculiar phenotype of an activated memory-like phenotype associated with massive TNF-α production. Discussion: These data suggest that fatal COVID-19 infection is driven by an uncoordinated inflammatory response in part mediated by a specific subset of activated NK cells.
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Registered trials
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