Patients with underlying cardiovascular conditions are particularly vulnerable to severe COVID-19. In this project, we aimed to characterize similarities in dysregulated immune pathways between COVID-19 patients and patients with cardiomyopathy, venous thromboembolism (VTE), or coronary artery disease (CAD). We hypothesized that these similarly dysregulated pathways may be critical to how cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) exacerbate COVID-19. To evaluate immune dysregulation in different diseases, we used four separate datasets, including RNA-sequencing data from human left ventricular cardiac muscle samples of patients with dilated or ischemic cardiomyopathy and healthy controls; RNA-sequencing data of whole blood samples from patients with single or recurrent event VTE and healthy controls; RNA-sequencing data of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients with and without obstructive CAD; and RNA-sequencing data of platelets from COVID-19 subjects and healthy controls. We found similar immune dysregulation profiles between patients with CVDs and COVID-19 patients. Interestingly, cardiomyopathy patients display the most similar immune landscape to COVID-19 patients. Additionally, COVID-19 patients experience greater upregulation of cytokine- and inflammasome-related genes than patients with CVDs. In all, patients with CVDs have a significant overlap of cytokine- and inflammasome-related gene expression profiles with that of COVID-19 patients, possibly explaining their greater vulnerability to severe COVID-19.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, Inflammation, Coronary artery disease, Cardiomyopathy, venous thromboembolism event, 【초록키워드】 severe COVID-19, cardiovascular disease, cytokine, Venous Thromboembolism, immune, Peripheral blood, Patient, pathway, Platelet, Critical, RNA-sequencing, COVID-19 patients, CAD, PBMCs, similarity, COVID-19 patient, VTE, immune dysregulation, mononuclear cell, CVD, overlap, profile, subject, upregulation, healthy controls, gene expression profile, datasets, different diseases, Obstructive, whole blood sample, greater, evaluate, dysregulated, exacerbate, cardiac muscle, cardiovascular condition, healthy controls;, immune pathway, ventricular,