Predictive value of cytokine/chemokine responses for the disease severity and management in children and adult cases with COVID-19

The disease course of children with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) seems milder as compared with adults, however, actual reason of the pathogenesis still remains unclear. There is a growing interest on possible relationship between pathogenicity or disease severity and biomarkers including cytokines or chemokines. We wondered whether these biomarkers could be used for the prediction of the prognosis of COVID-19 and improving our understanding on the variations between pediatric and adult cases with COVID-19. The acute phase serum levels of 25 cytokines and chemokines in the serum samples from 60 COVID-19 pediatric (n = 30) and adult cases (n = 30) including 20 severe or critically ill, 25 moderate and 15 mild patients and 30 healthy pediatric (n = 15) and adult (n = 15) volunteers were measured using commercially available fluorescent bead immunoassay and analyzed in combination with clinical data. Interferon gamma-induced protein 10 (IP-10) and macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-3 beta levels were significantly higher in patient cohort including pediatric and adult cases with COVID-19 when compared with all healthy volunteers (p <= .001 in each) and whereas IP-10 levels were significantly higher in both pediatric and adult cases with severe disease course, MIP-3 beta were significantly lower in healthy controls. Additionally, IP-10 is an independent predictor for disease severity, particularly in children and interleukin-6 seems a relatively good predictor for disease severity in adults. IP-10 and MIP-3 beta seem good research candidates to understand severity of COVID-19 in both pediatric and adult population and to investigate possible pathophysiological mechanism of COVID-19.