Leucocyte biomarkers In secondary bacterial infection of COVID-19: in vivo methylprednisolone test on early sepsis mice models

Abstract

The severe conditions of coronavirus diseases 2019 (COVID-19) are sepsis and the severe systemic inflammatory response. The sepsis pathogens can be bacteria, fungi, viruses or other microbes. Early sepsis is an increase in the number of leukocytes to exceed the standard value. Immune suppression stage following the proinflammatory phase by a sustained and substantial reduction of the peripheral lymphocyte counts, mainly CD4 T and CD8 T cells in COVID-19 patients, and is associated with a high risk of developing a secondary bacterial infection. Low dose steroids as one of the procedures for sepsis. This study aims to analyse the effect of low dose corticosteroids (methylprednisolone) on the count of BALB/c mice leukocytes in early sepsis. This type of research is a real experiment with a post-test only control group research design. The subjects used in this study were 30 male BALB/c mice. Sample grouping was random to divide subjects into three groups, namely the control group, the sepsis group (cecal inoculum induction) and the sepsis group who were given methylprednisolone 0.13 mg/day in mice. The results of the Post-Hoc Bonferroni test of the sepsis group against the sepsis group and methylprednisolone showed a significant difference in the monocyte count groups (p = 0.009) and lymphocytes (p = 0.046) while neutrophils showed no significant results (p = 0.100). In the early stages of sepsis, methylprednisolone can reduce the average neutrophil and monocyte count, increase the average lymphocyte count, but it has no effect on the basophile and eosinophil count.