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. 2021 May;14(5):43.
doi: 10.3892/br.2021.1419. Epub 2021 Mar 9.

Low type I interferon response in COVID-19 patients: Interferon response may be a potential treatment for COVID-19

Ahmed Abdulwahid Salman  1 , Mohammed Hussein Waheed  1 , Akeel Abd Ali-Abdulsahib  2 , Zeenah Weheed Atwan  3
Affiliations

Low type I interferon response in COVID-19 patients: Interferon response may be a potential treatment for COVID-19

Ahmed Abdulwahid Salman et al. Biomed Rep. 2021 May.

Abstract

Interferons (IFN) are antiviral cytokines that mitigate the effects of invading viruses early on during the infection process. SARS-CoV and MERS induce weak IFN responses; hence, the clinical trials which included recombinant IFN accompanied with other antiviral drugs exhibited improved results in terms of shortening the duration of illness. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the type I IFN response in COVID-19 patients to determine whether it is sufficient to eliminate or reduce the severity of the infection, and whether it can be recommended as a potential therapy. Total RNA samples were converted to cDNA and used as templates to evaluate the gene expression levels of IFN regulatory factor (IRF)3 and IFN-β in COVID-19 patients or control. The results showed that IRF3 gene expression was upregulated ~250-fold compared with the negative samples. In contrast, IFN-β expression increased slightly in COVID-19 patients. Consistent with other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS, COVID-19 infection does not induce an efficient IFN response to reduce the severity of the virus. This may be attributed to an incomplete response of IRF3 in activating the IFN-β promoter in the infected patients. The results suggest IFN-β or α may be used as potential treatments.

Keywords: COVID-19; innate immune response; interferon; interferon regulatory factor; type I interferon.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
IRF3 gene expression in COVID-19 infected individuals compared with uninfected controls. (A) IRF3 mRNA expression was quantified by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR. (B) Relative IRF3 mRNA expression levels. The results were normalised to the control values, and are presented as the mean ± standard deviation of the three technical replicates. β-actin was used as the internal control. The fluorescence was detected using SYBR-Green as the intercalating dye. IRF, interferon regulatory factor-3.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) IFN-β gene expression in COVID-19 infected individuals compared with uninfected controls. IFN-β mRNA expression was quantified by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR. (B) Relative IFN-β mRNA expression levels. The results were normalised to the control values, and are presented as the mean ± standard deviation of the three technical replicates. β-actin was used as the internal control. The fluorescence was detected using SYBR-Green as the intercalating dye. IFB-β, interferon-β.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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