Int J Infect Dis . Proteomic profiling reveals a distinctive molecular signature for critically ill COVID-19 patients compared with asthma and COPD: A distinctive molecular signature for critically ill COVID-19 patients

[tetano]

Int J Infect Dis


. 2022 Jan 8;S1201-9712(22)00001-7.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2022.01.008. Online ahead of print.
Proteomic profiling reveals a distinctive molecular signature for critically ill COVID-19 patients compared with asthma and COPD: A distinctive molecular signature for critically ill COVID-19 patients


Zili Zhang ¹ , Fanjie Lin ¹ , Fei Liu ² , Qiongqiong Li ¹ , Yuanyuan Li ¹ , Zhanbei Zhu ¹ , Hua Guo ¹ , Lidong Liu ³ , Xiaoqing Liu ¹ , Wei Liu ¹ , Yaowei Fang ¹ , Xinguang Wei ¹ , Wenju Lu ⁴



Affiliations

• PMID: 35017110
• PMCID: PMC8743279
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2022.01.008

Abstract

Objective: The mortality rate for critically ill coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases was more than 80%. Nonetheless, research about the effect of common respiratory diseases on critically ill COVID-19 expression and outcomes is scarce.
Design: We performed proteomic analyses on airway mucus obtained by bronchoscopy from severe COVID-19 patients, or induced sputum from patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, and healthy controls.
Results: Out of the total identified and quantified proteins, 445 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were found in different comparison groups. In comparison to COPD, asthma, and controls, 11 proteins were uniquely present in COVID-19 patients. Apart from DEPs associated with COPD vs controls and asthma vs controls, there were a total of 59 DEPs specific to COVID-19 patients. Finally, the findings revealed that there were 8 overlapping proteins in COVID-19 patients, including C9, FGB, FGG, PRTN3, HBB, HBA1, IGLV3-19, and COTL1. Functional analyses revealed that the majority of them were associated with complement and coagulation cascades, platelet activation, or iron metabolism, and anemia-related pathways.
Conclusions: This study provides fundamental data for identifying COVID-19-specific proteomic changes in comparison to COPD and asthma, which may suggest molecular targets for specialized therapy.

Keywords: Airway mucus; Asthma; COPD; Critically ill COVID-19; Proteomic sequencing.