Meta-analysis of COVID-19 single-cell studies confirms eight key immune responses

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 11; no. 1; p. 20833
• Main Authors: Garg, Manik, Li, Xu, Moreno, Pablo, Papatheodorou, Irene, Shu, Yuelong, Brazma, Alvis, Miao, Zhichao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 21-10-2021; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/114; 692/53; 692/699/255; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Humanities and Social Sciences; Immune response; Interferon; Lymphocytes B; Lymphocytes T; Meta-analysis; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-00121-z

Several single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) studies analyzing immune response to COVID-19 infection have been recently published. Most of these studies have small sample sizes, which limits the conclusions that can be made with high confidence. By re-analyzing these data in a standardized manner, we validated 8 of the 20 published results across multiple datasets. In particular, we found a consistent decrease in T-cells with increasing COVID-19 infection severity, upregulation of type I Interferon signal pathways, presence of expanded B-cell clones in COVID-19 patients but no consistent trend in T-cell clonal expansion. Overall, our results show that the conclusions drawn from scRNA-seq data analysis of small cohorts of COVID-19 patients need to be treated with some caution.