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. 2021 Jan;22(1):19-24.
doi: 10.1038/s41590-020-00832-x. Epub 2020 Nov 18.

Macrophage expression and prognostic significance of the long pentraxin PTX3 in COVID-19

Enrico Brunetta #  1   2 , Marco Folci #  1   2 , Barbara Bottazzi #  1 , Maria De Santis  1 , Giuseppe Gritti  3 , Alessandro Protti  1   2 , Sarah N Mapelli  1 , Stefanos Bonovas  1   2 , Daniele Piovani  1   2 , Roberto Leone  1 , Ilaria My  1   2 , Veronica Zanon  1 , Gianmarco Spata  1 , Monica Bacci  1 , Domenico Supino  2 , Silvia Carnevale  2 , Marina Sironi  1 , Sadaf Davoudian  1 , Clelia Peano  1   4 , Francesco Landi  3 , Fabiano Di Marco  5   6 , Federico Raimondi  5 , Andrea Gianatti  7 , Claudio Angelini  1 , Alessandro Rambaldi  8   9 , Cecilia Garlanda  10   11 , Michele Ciccarelli  12 , Maurizio Cecconi  13   14 , Alberto Mantovani  15   16   17
Affiliations
Free article

Macrophage expression and prognostic significance of the long pentraxin PTX3 in COVID-19

Enrico Brunetta et al. Nat Immunol. 2021 Jan.
Free article

Abstract

Long pentraxin 3 (PTX3) is an essential component of humoral innate immunity, involved in resistance to selected pathogens and in the regulation of inflammation1-3. The present study was designed to assess the presence and significance of PTX3 in Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)4-7. RNA-sequencing analysis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells, single-cell bioinformatics analysis and immunohistochemistry of lung autopsy samples revealed that myelomonocytic cells and endothelial cells express high levels of PTX3 in patients with COVID-19. Increased plasma concentrations of PTX3 were detected in 96 patients with COVID-19. PTX3 emerged as a strong independent predictor of 28-d mortality in multivariable analysis, better than conventional markers of inflammation, in hospitalized patients with COVID-19. The prognostic significance of PTX3 abundance for mortality was confirmed in a second independent cohort (54 patients). Thus, circulating and lung myelomonocytic cells and endothelial cells are a major source of PTX3, and PTX3 plasma concentration can serve as an independent strong prognostic indicator of short-term mortality in COVID-19.

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References

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