A blood atlas of COVID-19 defines hallmarks of disease severity and specificity
David Ahern, Zhichao Ai, Mark Ainsworth, Chris Allan, Alice Allcock, Brian Angus, M. Azim Ansari, Carolina V. Arancibia-Cárcamo, Dominik Aschenbrenner, Moustafa Attar, J. Kenneth Baillie, Eleanor Barnes, Rachael Bashford-Rogers, Archana Bashyal, Sally Beer, G. Berridge, Amy Beveridge, Sagida Bibi, Tihana Bicanic, Luke Blackwell, Paul Bowness, Andrew Brent, Andrew Brown, John Broxholme, David Buck, Katie L. Burnham, Helen M. Byrne, Susana Camara, Ivan Candido-Ferreira, Philip D. Charles, Wentao Chen, Yi‐Ling Chen, Amanda Y. Chong, Elizabeth Clutterbuck, Mark Coles, Christopher P. Conlon, Richard J. Cornall, Adam P. Cribbs, Fabiola Curion, Emma E. Davenport, Neil Davidson, Simon Davis, Calliope A. Dendrou, Julie Dequaire, Lea Dib, James Docker, Christina Dold, Tao Dong, Damien J. Downes, Hal Drakesmith, Susanna Dunachie, David A. Duncan, Chris Eijsbouts, Robert Esnouf, Alexis Espinosa, Rachel Etherington, Benjamin P. Fairfax, Rory Fairhead, Hai Fang, Shayan Fassih, Sally Felle, Maria Fernandez Mendoza, Ricardo Melo Ferreira, Román Fischer, Thomas Foord, Aden Forrow, John Frater, Anastasia Fries, Verónica Sánchez, Lucy C. Garner, Clementine Geeves, Dominique Georgiou, Leila Godfrey, Tanya Golubchik, Maria Gomez Vazquez, Angie Green, Hong Harper, Heather A. Harrington, Raphael Heilig, Svenja Hester, Jennifer Hill, Charles Hinds, Clare Hird, Ling‐Pei Ho, Renee S. Hoekzema, Benjamin Hollis, Jim R. Hughes, Paula Hutton, Matthew A. Jackson-Wood, Ashwin Jainarayanan, Anna James-Bott, Kathrin Jansen, Katie Jeffery, Elizabeth Jones, Luke Jostins, Georgina Kerr, David Kim, Paul Klenerman, Julian C. Knight, Vinod Kumar
Abstract
Treatment of severe COVID-19 is currently limited by clinical heterogeneity and incomplete description of specific immune biomarkers. We present here a comprehensive multi-omic blood atlas for patients with varying COVID-19 severity in an integrated comparison with influenza and sepsis patients versus healthy volunteers. We identify immune signatures and correlates of host response. Hallmarks of disease severity involved cells, their inflammatory mediators and networks, including progenitor cells and specific myeloid and lymphocyte subsets, features of the immune repertoire, acute phase response, metabolism, and coagulation. Persisting immune activation involving AP-1/p38MAPK was a specific feature of COVID-19. The plasma proteome enabled sub-phenotyping into patient clusters, predictive of severity and outcome. Systems-based integrative analyses including tensor and matrix decomposition of all modalities revealed feature groupings linked with severity and specificity compared to influenza and sepsis. Our approach and blood atlas will support future drug development, clinical trial design, and personalized medicine approaches for COVID-19.