Exploiting Molecular Basis of Age and Gender Differences in Outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 Infections

Abstract

Motivation: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection (coronavirus disease, 2019; COVID-19) is associated with adverse outcomes in patients. It has been observed that lethality seems to be related to the age of patients. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that ageing causes some modifications at a molecular level. Objective: The study aims to shed out light on a possible link between the increased COVID-19 lethality and the molecular changes that occur in elderly people. Methods: We considered public datasets on ageing-related genes and their expression at tissue level. We selected interactors that are known to be related to ageing process. Then, we performed a networkbased analysis to identify interactors significantly related to both SARS-CoV-2 and ageing. Finally, we investigated changes on the expression level of coding genes at tissue, gender and age level. Results We observed a significant intersection between some SARS-CoV-2 interactors and ageing-related genes suggesting that those genes are particularly affected by COVID-19 infection. Our analysis evidenced that virus infection particularly affects ageing molecular mechanisms centred around proteins EEF2, NPM1, HMGA1, HMGA2, APEX1, CHEK1, PRKDC, and GPX4. We found that HMGA1, and NPM1 have a different expression in lung of males, while HMGA1, APEX1, CHEK1, EEF2, and NPM1 present changes in expression in males due to aging effects. Conclusion Our study generated a mechanistic framework to explaining the correlation between COVID-19 incidence in elderly patients and molecular mechanisms of ageing. This will provide testable hypotheses for future investigation and pharmacological solutions tailored on specific age ranges.

LncRNA SNHG1 promotes renal cell carcinoma progression through regulation of HMGA2 via sponging miR‐103a

“…18 Growing evidence suggested that HMGA2 may be associated with tumorigenesis in a variety of cancers, including lung, breast, kidney and gastric cancers. 8,9,11,19 In our present study, we identified HMGA2 as a down-stream target of miR-103a, and our data revealed that miR-103a directly regulate the expression of HMGA2. These data suggested that SNHG1 promoted RCC proliferation through upregulated HMGA2 by sponging miR-103a.…”

“…HMGA2, a member of high mobility group AT‐hook family, is characterized as an oncofetal protein which is hardly expressed in the differentiated tissues, whereas is highly expressed in a variety of tumors 18 . Growing evidence suggested that HMGA2 may be associated with tumorigenesis in a variety of cancers, including lung, breast, kidney and gastric cancers 8 , 9 , 11 , 19 . In our present study, we identified HMGA2 as a down‐stream target of miR‐103a, and our data revealed that miR‐103a directly regulate the expression of HMGA2.…”

Using Smart Devices for monitoring elderly patients in rural areas of Calabria after COVID-19 Vaccination: Experiences within the SI-4CARE Project

“…The pilot is based on testing the effectiveness of the wearable device for monitoring the healthcare status of older adults after covid-19 vaccination [1,2].…”

NOMA-DB: A Framework for Management and Analysis of Ageing-related Gene-Expression Data

“…The current version of the GTEx database (v8 accessed on August 22th) stores 17382 samples of 54 tissues of 948 donors, see at https://gtexportal.org/home/tissueSummaryPage. GTEx is available through a web interface that offers easy to use query interface and visualisation of data in tissues, and it is used in many ageing-related studies [24,25,26,27]. Despite this, to our knowledge, the GTEx data portal has some limitations, such as (i) users cannot query data grouped by age or sex, and (ii) data are not integrated with existing protein interaction databases.…”