Biomarkers Prediction and Immune Landscape in Covid-19 and “Brain Fog”

Background Recent studies have shown that there is a decline in cognitive and memory abilities following SARS-CoV-2 infection, but it is unclear how SARS-CoV-2 causes neurological dysfunction and which molecular processes in the brain(which is called brain fog)are affected. The study aimed to identify key “brain fog”-related genes in COVID-19 patients. Methods To investigate weather COVID-19 affects cognitive decline, differential expression analysis was employed to identify differentially “brain fog”-related expressed genes (DEGs) of frontal cortex from the GEO database (GSE188847). Functional enrichment analysis was conducted to identify relevant signaling pathways. LASSO regression was utilized to screen pivotal genes. Weighted gene co-expression network anlaysis (WGCNA) was applied to identify different modules. Additionally, we use the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) database to search key genes related to drugs or molecular compounds. Results 81 up-regulated and 441 down-regulated DEGs, obtained from the frontal cortex samples between COVID-19 and normal samples, were identified. Furthermore, we identified up-regulated DEGs is almost in lung fibrosis and immune-related pathways, yet down-regulated DEGs is in neuron and synapse pathways. We then identified five key genes associated with aging in COVID-19, including SST, S100A9, SOSC3, FKBP5 and HBB. Compared to normal tissue, the expression levels off SST significantly decreased, the other four genes were significantly increased. Finally, we identified seven drugs associated with key genes: Fulvestrant, Bucladesine, S-Adenosylmethionine, Valproic Acid, Folic Acid, kaempferol and Quercetin. Conclusions Our findings revealed several key “brain fog”-related genes related to COVID-19 and several relevant drugs, providing a novel insight into the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 infection in brain and potential implications for future cognitive decline treatment. This study contributes to a better understanding of critical genes in COVID-19 and its implications for future therapeutic interventions.

Note:
Funding Information: None.

Declaration of Interests: None.

Keywords: COVID-19, brain fog, gene

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Wu, Xueling and Wang, Ben and Xie, Cuiying and Xu, Qiong and Wu, Qiong and Zhang, Liyan and Zhao, Yunfeng, Biomarkers Prediction and Immune Landscape in Covid-19 and “Brain Fog”. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4897774 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4897774