{"doi":"10.1101/2020.12.11.416180","title":"Profound Treg perturbations correlate with COVID-19 severity","abstract":"The hallmark of severe COVID-19 disease has been an uncontrolled inflammatory response, resulting from poorly understood immunological dysfunction. We explored the hypothesis that perturbations in FoxP3+ T regulatory cells (Treg), key enforcers of immune homeostasis, contribute to COVID-19 pathology. Cytometric and transcriptomic profiling revealed a distinct Treg phenotype in severe COVID-19 patients, with an increase in both Treg proportions and intracellular levels of the lineage-defining transcription factor FoxP3, which correlated with poor outcomes. Accordingly, these Tregs over-expressed a range of suppressive effectors, but also pro-inflammatory molecules like IL32. Most strikingly, they acquired similarity to tumor-infiltrating Tregs, known to suppress local anti-tumor responses. These traits were most marked in acute patients with severe disease, but persisted somewhat in convalescent patients. These results suggest that Tregs may play nefarious roles in COVID-19, via suppressing anti-viral T cell responses during the severe phase of the disease, and/or via a direct pro-inflammatory role.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":118808,"datarank":0.5570358100056463,"base_score":3.713572066704308,"endowment":3.713572066704308,"self_citation_contribution":0.5570358100056463,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5570358100056463,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":40,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.963,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":552215,"name":"Juliette Léon","orcid":"0000-0001-5314-8154","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":88184,"name":"Kaitavjeet Chowdhary","orcid":"0000-0002-9595-3706","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":552216,"name":"Daniel A. Michelson","orcid":"0000-0002-9434-5207","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":59677,"name":"Brinda Vijaykumar","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":552217,"name":"Liang Yang","orcid":"0009-0007-2903-641X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":59678,"name":"Angela M. Magnuson","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":552218,"name":"Zachary Manickas-Hill","orcid":"0000-0002-9880-2356","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108361,"name":"Alicja Piechocka‐Trocha","orcid":"0000-0002-1547-524X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":218321,"name":"Daniel Worrall","orcid":"0000-0002-7760-9848","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":83187,"name":"Kathryn Hall","orcid":"0000-0001-9179-283X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":249351,"name":"Musie Ghebremichael","orcid":"0000-0002-8572-1944","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108341,"name":"Bruce D. Walker","orcid":"0000-0001-6122-9245","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108340,"name":"Jonathan Z. Li","orcid":"0000-0001-9914-9662","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108339,"name":"Xu G. Yu","orcid":"0000-0002-8295-884X","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108427,"name":"MGH COVID-19 Collection & Processing Team","orcid":null,"position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":37333,"name":"Diane Mathis","orcid":"0000-0002-6110-4626","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":18715,"name":"Christophe Benoıst","orcid":"0000-0003-1172-6555","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":552214,"name":"Silvia Galván-Peña","orcid":"0000-0003-1639-2048","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:03.409507Z","pmid":"33330871","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}