COVID-19 is associated with significant drops in CD4 count

27 March 2020. Related: COVID-19: pathogenesis, COVID-19.

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base

The paper describes lab results including peripheral lymphocyte subsets in 452 people with COVID-19 in China, 286 of them had severe disease. Median age was 58 with roughly half men and half women.

The abstract reports the most common symptoms were fever, shortness of breath, expectoration, fatigue, dry cough and myalgia. Severe cases tended to have lower lymphocytes counts, higher leukocytes counts and neutrophil-lymphocyte-ratio (NLR), and lower percentages of monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils.

Severe cases also had higher infection-related biomarkers and inflammatory cytokines.

Ref: Qin C et al. Dysregulation of immune response in patients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. Clinical Infectious Diseases, ciaa248. (12 March 2020). DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciaa248
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa248/5803306