key: cord-0732908-nzbzh0em
authors: Hoepner, Robert; Kamm, Christian P; Friedli, Christoph; Salmen, Anke; Chan, Andrew
title: Is COVID‐19 severity associated with reduction in T lymphocytes in anti‐CD20‐treated people with Multiple Sclerosis or Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder?
date: 2022-04-12
journal: CNS Neurosci Ther
DOI: 10.1111/cns.13841
sha: 423ae85a1f6df5d48fe298eb1af457f1a167f6ac
doc_id: 732908
cord_uid: nzbzh0em

nan

Corona Virus Disease (COVID)-19 has a more severe course in people treated with anti-CD20 therapies. 1 In addition to depletion of B cells with reduced antibody responses, 2,3 a decrease in CD3 + T lymphocytes, especially CD8 + cytotoxic T cells, 4 by anti-CD20 drugs may be causative as particularly CD8 + T cell responses are discussed to be associated with COVID-19 severity. 2 The aim of our letter was to investigate whether T cell counts (CD3 + , CD4 + , or CD8 + ) are different in anti-CD20-treated patients (Ocrevus®, Roche 10/14; MabThera®, Roche 4/14) with severe (hospitalized, n = 7) or mild (outpatient managed, n = 7) COVID-19 course.

In total, 14 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS, 11/14) or neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD 3/14) receiving anti-CD20 drugs, who had a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV2) infection while on anti-CD20 treatment, were identified by medical chart review (Cantonal Hospital Lucerne: to COVID-19. The main limitation of our article is the small sample size, which might be too small to detect statistical differences. We, therefore, view our data as hypothesis-generating and ask other researchers to share their anonymized data with our research group (contact for data sharing with us or requesting our data via corresponding authors) in order to overcome this limitation.

Dr Hoepner received speaker/advisor honorary from Merck, Novartis, Roche, Biogen, Alexion, Sanofi, Janssen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and

Almirall. He received research support within the last 5 years from Roche, Merck, Sanofi, Biogen, Chiesi, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. He also received research grants from the Swiss MS Society. He also F I G U R E 1 Table presenting the cohort characteristics and violin plots demonstrating the distribution of CD3 + , CD8 + , and CD4 + lymphocytes between outpatient managed (bronze) and hospitalized (gray) patients with COVID-19 while on anti-CD20 treatment. Violin plots display median, 25th and 75th quartiles and minimum/maximum. Mann-Whitney test demonstrated no significant differences with p-values as follows: CD3 + p = 0.90, CD4 + p = 0.90, CD8 + p = 0.90, and CD19 + p = 0.73 (CD19 + not displayed as violin plot). 

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