17 patients with laboratory-confirmed MERS-CoV during the 2015 outbreak in Korea were studied.
The severe group had higher neutrophil counts during week 1 than the mild group (4,500 versus 2,200/muL, P = 0.026). In the second week of illness, the severe group had higher serum levels of IL-6 (54 versus 4 pg/ml, p = 0.006) and CXCL-10 (2,642 versus 382 pg/ml, p < 0.001).