Feb. 28 (UPI) —<\/span> A new data analysis tool developed by researchers at Yale University has identified specific immune cell types that can be used to spot people at increased risk for death from COVID-19, they said in an article published Monday by the journal Nature Biotechnology.<\/p>\n The Multiscale PHATE tool can analyze millions of cells within minutes using an algorithm called PHATE, or Potential of Heat-diffusion for Affinity-based Transition Embedding, the researchers said.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n The machine-learning tool enables researchers to track cell development and spot changes in cell production instantly, they said.<\/p>\n Using the tool, they analyzed 55 million blood cells taken from 163 patients with severe COVID-19 admitted to Yale New Haven Hospital and found that high levels T cells helped prevent death from the disease.\n<\/p>\n Conversely, high levels of two white blood cell types known as granulocytes and monocytes were associated with higher risk for death in people with severe COVID-19, the data showed.<\/p>\n By measuring levels of these cells in the blood, the Yale researchers accurately predicted whether patients lived or died 83% of the time, they said.<\/p>\n In theory, the new data analytical tool could be used to fine tune risk assessment in a host of diseases, Smita Krishnaswamy, an associate professor of genetics and computer science at Yale University and one of the developers of the Multiscale PHATE tool, said in a news release.\n<\/p>\n “We were able to rank order risk factors of mortality to show which are the most dangerous,” she said.<\/p>\n Immune cells such as T cells and B cells are known to provide broad protection against viruses, including the one that causes COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n These white blood cells are involved in the production of antibodies, or proteins that help the immune system fight off viruses, the agency says.<\/p>\n Vaccines against viruses, including those developed to fight COVID-19, are designed to boost production of antibodies, it says.<\/p>\n However, in COVID-19, some immune cell responses, including those that are normally protective against other viruses, can occasionally trigger deadly inflammation and death in patients, according to the Yale researchers.<\/p>\n Previous studies have identified several proteins that, at high blood levels, appear to increase a person’s risk for death from COVID-19.<\/p>\n Using Multiscale PHATE, they found that a type of T cell called TH17 was associated with higher mortality in COVID-19 patients when clustered with the immune system cells IL-17 and IFNG, they said.<\/p>\n “Machine-learning algorithms typically focus on a single resolution view of the data, ignoring information that can be found in other more focused views,” study co-author Manik Kuchroo said in the press release.\n<\/p>\n “For this reason, we created Multiscale PHATE, which allows users to zoom in and focus on specific subsets of their data to perform more detailed analysis,” said Kuchroo, a doctoral candidate at Yale School of Medicine, who helped develop the technology.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1\/3 Using a new machine-learning tool, researchers say they can analyze blood samples collected from patients with severe COVID-19 and identify those at risk for death from the disease. Photo by EPA-EFE Feb. 28 (UPI) — A new data analysis tool developed by researchers at Yale University has identified specific immune cell types that can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1006396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[261,371,5524,1724,3534,425,1227,5525],"class_list":["post-1006395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-covid19","tag-death","tag-identifies","tag-patients","tag-researchers","tag-risk","tag-severe","tag-tool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
1\/3<\/p>\n
![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/New-tool-identifies-severe-COVID-19-patients-at-risk-for-death-researchers-say.jpg\" "\\"New")
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Using a new machine-learning tool, researchers say they can analyze blood samples collected from patients with severe COVID-19 and identify those at risk for death from the disease. Photo by EPA-EFE<\/p>\n