Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Th2/Th1 Cytokine Imbalance Is Associated With Higher Covid-19 Risk Mortality, Ana B. Pavel, Jacob W. Glickman, James R. Michels, Seunghee Kim-Schulze, Rachel L. Miller, Emma Guttman-Yassky

Faculty and Student Publications

A major component of COVID-19 severe respiratory syndrome is the patient’s immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the consequential multi-organ inflammatory response. Several studies suggested a potential role of CD4+ T cells in COVID-19 severe respiratory syndrome. We first hypothesized that there is a type 2 helper (Th2)/type 1 helper (Th1) imbalance in older age, male, asthma, smokers, and high ACE2 expression phenotype in the airway of non-infected patients. Next, we hypothesized that a Th2/Th1 imbalance may predict higher mortality in COVID-19 infected hospitalized patients with and without patient reported current asthma. We first analyzed publicly available gene expression …