Analysis of the potential relationship between COVID-19 and Behcet’s disease using transcriptome data

Abstract

To investigate the potential role of COVID-19 in relation to Behcet's disease (BD) and to search for relevant biomarkers. We used a bioinformatics approach to download transcriptomic data from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of COVID-19 patients and PBMCs of BD patients, screened the common differential genes between COVID-19 and BD, performed gene ontology (GO) and pathway analysis, and constructed the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, screened the hub genes and performed co-expression analysis. In addition, we constructed the genes-transcription factors (TFs)-miRNAs network, the genesdiseases network and the genes-drugs network to gain insight into the interactions between the 2 diseases. We used the RNAseq dataset from the GEO database (GSE152418, GSE198533). We used cross-analysis to obtain 461 up-regulated common differential genes and 509 down-regulated common differential genes, mapped the PPI network, and used Cytohubba to identify the 15 most strongly associated genes as hub genes (ACTB,

Epidemiological Profile of Bechcet’s Disease in Hospitalized Patients Infected With SARS-CoV-2 in Brazil: A Serial Case Report and a Literature Review

“…In this context, we performed a cohort study using a national dataset that contained epidemiological information about those who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 in Brazil. In brief, our study data found that patients with BD were not at an increased risk of worse COVID-19 outcomes when compared to the general population in Brazil as published before [38,39].…”

“…Moreover, the patients with COVID-19 in the general population presented a case fatality rate of 34.7% which was above the 26.1% observed for patients with BD. However, the case fatality rate for patients with BD was above other populations evaluated in that study, such as patients infected with a) Influenza virus (14.2%), b) another respiratory virus (4.6%), c) another known etiological agent, and d) undefined etiological agent (19.8%) [38]. The same research group published another study conducted with 585,655 hospitalized individuals with a positive result in the SARS-CoV-2 test to evaluate the characterization of demographic data, clinical signs, comorbidities, and outcomes according to the race in Brazil [39].…”

“…In Brazil, Sansone and collaborators (2022) published a study with 2,740,272 hospitalized patients due to severe acute respiratory infection to evaluate the epidemiologic profile of the patients during the COVID-19 pandemic [38]. The authors concluded that patients with a higher risk of death had a different epidemiological profile when compared with patients who recovered from the infection, like older age, Black, Indigenous, and multiracial background races, low educational level, residence in a flu outbreak region, need for intensive care unit and need for mechanical ventilatory support [38]. Moreover, the patients with COVID-19 in the general population presented a case fatality rate of 34.7% which was above the 26.1% observed for patients with BD.…”