Correlations of systemic blood cytokines in patients with coronary heart disease and experienced COVID-19

Coronavirus infection brings an extreme threat to older people and particularly to patients with severe cardiovascular pathology, including coronary heart disease (CHD). Recovery in these patients largely depends on the severity of cytokine disorders in the acute phase of the disease, since they negatively affect cardiomyocytes, including those through the development of complications in other organs and systems. However, changes in the plasma cytokines of elderly patients with CHD who have experienced COVID-19 have not been studied in practice.

Objective. To study the correlations of plasma cytokines in older patients with CHD in the early recovery stages after COVID-19.

Subjects and methods. The investigation enrolled 40 elderly patients with CHD at weeks 3-4 following recovery from COVID-19 and 38 patients of the same age with CHD without COVID-19 in their history. The fasting plasma cytokine level was determined using a Becton Dickinson FACS Canto 2 apparatus (USA) in the morning. The relations between the cytokines were studied by the correlation method.

Results. Interleukin (IL)-6 showed the greatest number of significant correlations (direct weak and medium associations with other cytokines), including a direct statistically significant average correlation with IL-17 (r=0.63), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) (r=0.42), interferon-γ (IFN-γ) (r=0.39), IL-2 (r=0.35), IL-3 (r=0.33), as well as a weak significant relationship to IL-7 (r=0.29). IFN-γ had three direct significant correlations with IL-6 (r=0.39), IL-7 (r=0.36), and TNF-α (r=0.29). The latter showed two direct average significant correlations with IL-6 and IL-17.

Conclusion. In the early stages of recovery, in 60–74-year old patients with CHD after experienced COVID-19, IL-6, IFN-γ, and TNF-α cytokines had the greatest conjugacy, which can be used as markers of recovery in this patient cohort.