Recombinant interleukin-2 stimulates lymphocyte recovery in patients with severe COVID-19.

Recombinant interleukin-2 stimulates lymphocyte recovery in patients with severe COVID-19. Exp Ther Med. 2021 Mar;21(3):227 Authors: Zhu ME, Wang Q, Zhou S, Wang B, Ke L, He P Abstract A recently identified type of pneumonia, referred to as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2, has rapidly spread worldwide. Lymphopenia and a proinflammatory cytokine storm frequently occur in patients with severe COVID-19. However, to the best of our knowledge, no specific immunomodulatory therapy for COVID-19 has been reported to date. In the present retrospective case-control study, the potential therapeutic effect of recombinant human interleukin-2 (rIL-2) in patients with severe COVID-19 was demonstrated. A total of 59 patients with severe COVID-19 were admitted to the Union Hospital of Tongji Medical College (Wuhan, China) between 29th January 2020 and 29th February 2020 and were included in the present study. In total, 20 patients received subcutaneous injection of rIL-2 (1 million IU per day) for 7-10 days in addition to regular treatment and were classified as the rIL-2 group. Furthermore, 20 of the 39 patients receiving regular treatment, without the intervention of rIL-2, were matched as the control group. Patients in these two groups were subjected to propensity score matching in terms of clinical characteristics such as age, sex, symptoms, signs, laboratory data and comorbi...
Source: Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine - Category: General Medicine Tags: Exp Ther Med Source Type: research