The Janus face of proliferating plasmablasts in dengue and COVID-19 infections

B cells play an integral role in the immune response to both dengue fever and COVID-19. Prior scRNAseq analyses of peripheral plasmablasts in COVID-19 have revealed a heterogeneous population with distinct cell subsets associated with proliferation; prior studies in patients with dengue fever have likewise shown the presence of proliferative pre-plasmablasts in the circulation. These findings may have implications for disease severity. In this study, we sought to gain a mechanistic understanding of the intracellular processes in naive and memory B cells that are associated with and may lead to an expanded proliferative plasmablast population in the circulation.

We analyzed age-controlled (pediatric and adult), peripheral blood mononuclear cell scRNAseq datasets from patients infected with either dengue (primary or secondary) or COVID-19 (non-severe or severe) from previously published studies. Our preliminary analysis showed that pediatric patients with dengue and adults with COVID-19 had an expanded proliferative plasmablast (p-PB) population. By contrast, neither the adults with dengue nor the children with COVID-19 in our dataset had p-PBs. We used this distinctive preliminary signature to guide our analyses design and expanded our analyses to naive and memory B cells.

In age/disease conditions with and without p-PBs, we found differences in cell sensing and activation, including via the B cell receptor and downstream signal transduction. Likewise, inflammation was mediated differently: relative to groups without p-PBs, those with p-PBs had increased expression of interferon response and S100 genes (particularly severe COVID-19). Furthermore, several transcription factors at the nexus of activation, inflammation, and cell fate decisions were expressed differently in groups with and without p-PBs.

We used dengue and COVID-19 infections in adult and pediatric patients (focusing on naive B, memory B, and plasmablast cells) as a model to better understand the mechanisms that may give rise to p-PB populations in the circulation. Our results indicate that a more pro-inflammatory state in naive and memory B cells correlated with - and could influence the generation of- proliferating plasmablasts. Further exploration of these mechanisms will have implications for immune memory, vaccine development, and post-viral autoimmune syndromes.