A study by researchers from the University of Copenhagen demonstrates how cells’ fitness status could serve as a biomarker for COVID-19 severity. The findings, published in EMBO Journal, elucidate the role of flower proteins and their role in acute lung injury.
“Cells have a so-called fitness status, and by analyzing it we could predict hospitalization or death in COVID-19 patients, potentially making such a biomarker an earlier prediction tool, especially because it can be detected from the common nasal swap COVID-19-tests,” says researcher Rajan Gogna.
Earlier in 2021, the research team reported how cell fitness status could be measured via the flower proteins. These flower proteins are on the surface of the cell, and they are expressed in two forms, Gogna explains. “In one form, they tell the surrounding cells that this cell is doing well. In the other form, they indicate to the surrounding tissue, that this particular cell is not doing well and thus has a bad fitness status. If the cell’s fitness status is not great, the cell will get phased out and killed by the surrounding cells.”
In order to analyze the data, the researchers performed a post-mortem examination of the infected lung tissue in deceased COVID-19 patients to determine the flower proteins’ biological role in acute lung injury. By using nasal swab samples, they also performed an observational study to evaluate whether the protein expression could accurately predict hospitalization or death. The team concluded that the cell fitness marker hFwe-Lose could accurately predict outcomes in COVID-19 patients.