Distinctive T-cell receptor repertoire in paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with coronavirus disease 2019/multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children patients: possible thymus involvement
Bibliographic record
Abstract
During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic a rare new paediatric inflammatory condition (paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with COVID-19 (PIMS-TS)/MIS-C) was identified which correlated with previous or recent SARS-CoV-2 infection. PIMS-TS led to severe multiorgan inflammation, suggestive of disruption of central tolerance and thymus function. Here we investigated the possible role of the thymus in paediatric PIMS-TS. We confirmed that human thymus explants can be infected with SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. Comparison of T-cell populations in blood from PIMS-TS patients and age-matched healthy control children showed that although the overall proportions of CD4 and CD8 T-cell populations were decreased in PIMS-TS patients, the proportion of naïve cells in the CD4 population was higher in the PIMS-TS group. In PIMS-TS patients, the number of TREC in Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) correlated strongly with the proportion of naïve CD4 and CD8 T cells, whereas this correlation was not present in healthy children. Sequencing rearranged TCRβ and TCRɑ transcripts from FACS-sorted CD4+CD8-CD3+ and CD4-CD8+CD3+ from blood from PIMS-TS, healthy children, and additionally paediatric severe COVID-19 patients showed that while all three groups showed similar diversity and distribution, the repertoire of the PIMS-TS and COVID-19 groups had distinctive patterns of TCR gene segment usage and VJ combinatorial usage compared to healthy controls (TRBV11-2 × TRBJ2-7, TRBV11-2 × TRBJ1-1, TRBV11-2 × TRBJ2-5, TRBV11-2 × TRBJ2-1; TRBV29-1 × TRBJ2-7, TRBV29-1 × TRBJ1-1 enriched in PIMS-TS; TRBV7-9 × TRBJ1-2, TRAV9-2 × TRAJ30, and TRAV26-1 × TRAJ39 enriched in COVID-19). The non-productive TCR rearrangements in the PIMS-TS group were also enriched for TRBV11-2, and showed bias towards distal (5'TRAV to 3'TRAJ) TCRɑ gene segment usage, suggesting involvement of the thymus in PIMS-TS.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".