Front Immunol . Targeted proteomics identifies circulating biomarkers associated with active COVID-19 and post-COVID-19

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Front Immunol


. 2022 Nov 3;13:1027122.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.1027122. eCollection 2022.
Targeted proteomics identifies circulating biomarkers associated with active COVID-19 and post-COVID-19


Martijn Zoodsma ^{1 2} , Aline H de Nooijer ³ , Inge Grondman ³ , Manoj Kumar Gupta ^{1 2} , Agnes Bonifacius ⁴ , Valerie A C M Koeken ^{1 2 3} , Emma Kooistra ³ , Gizem Kilic ³ , Ozlem Bulut ³ , Nina Gödecke ⁴ , Nico Janssen ³ , Matthijs Kox ⁵ , Jorge Domínguez-Andrés ³ , Adriaan J van Gammeren ⁶ , Anton A M Ermens ⁶ , Andre J A M van der Ven ³ , Peter Pickkers ⁵ , Rainer Blasczyk ⁴ , Georg M N Behrens ^{1 7 8} , Frank L van de Veerdonk ³ , Leo A B Joosten ^{3 9} , Cheng-Jian Xu ^{1 2 3} , Britta Eiz-Vesper ⁴ , Mihai G Netea ^{3 10} , Yang Li ^{1 2 3}



Affiliations

• PMID: 36405747
• PMCID: PMC9670186
• DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.1027122

Abstract

The ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by the highly infectious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). There is an urgent need for biomarkers that will help in better stratification of patients and contribute to personalized treatments. We performed targeted proteomics using the Olink platform and systematically investigated protein concentrations in 350 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, 186 post-COVID-19 individuals, and 61 healthy individuals from 3 independent cohorts. Results revealed a signature of acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, which is represented by inflammatory biomarkers, chemokines and complement-related factors. Furthermore, the circulating proteome is still significantly affected in post-COVID-19 samples several weeks after infection. Post-COVID-19 individuals are characterized by upregulation of mediators of the tumor necrosis (TNF)-α signaling pathways and proteins related to transforming growth factor (TGF)-ß. In addition, the circulating proteome is able to differentiate between patients with different COVID-19 disease severities, and is associated with the time after infection. These results provide important insights into changes induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection at the proteomic level by integrating several cohorts to obtain a large disease spectrum, including variation in disease severity and time after infection. These findings could guide the development of host-directed therapy in COVID-19.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; biomarker; inflammation; post-COVID-19; targeted proteomics.