Ephrin Ligands are Upregulated in the Saliva of SARS-CoV-2 Infected Patients.

Saliva is low risk to obtain and is a biologically relevant sample that can be used to reliably measure changes in epithelial and immune cell responses of COVID-19 patients. Specifically, our study showed that ephrin-A1 and ephrin-B2 ligands are upregulated in the saliva of COVID-19 patients in a TNF-α independent manner and that ephrin-B2 correlates negatively with IL-12p70 (a potent pro-inflammatory cytokine). Future studies are aimed at establishing ephrin ligands as a biomarker for severity of lung injury and improving understanding the patho-physiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection.