Transcriptome Profiling of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells Reveals COVID-19 Patients Are Not Recovered to Normal After Discharge for 5 Months

BackgroundHighly pathogenic coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) initiated by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has swiftly expanded throughout the world, and the fatality rate is still expanding due to the second wave in 2020 winters. This ongoing epidemic threatens public health with its new strain that emerged in some countries and might cause devastating deaths. Therefore, the host transcriptomic profile from patients during recovery is important for understanding this disease. MethodsWe performed transcriptome profiling of the RNAs isolated from the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of recovered COVID-19 patients at hospital discharge of three months and five months respectively.ResultsOur results exposed diverse inflammatory genes and cytokine profiles to infection in recovered patients, and emphasize the highly expressed genes in COVID-19 patients like CCL4, CCL3, CXCL9, CXCL16, IL10, CSF2, VEGFA showed a decreasing trend in recovered patients. Furthermore, the integrated analysis predicted that JUN, CTSL, DDIT4, RRAS, BIRC5, CTSZ, CCNB2, CDK1, OAS1/2, IFIT3, RSAD2, and TP53I3 genes may be valuable for the recovery of COVID-19 patients. ConclusionsOur analysis confirms the presence of some inflammatory genes in recovered patients, suggesting COVID-19 patients did not return to their normal expression even after 5-months of discharge. Identification of transcriptome profiling of recovered patients provides useful information regarding its pathogenesis and might help for the development of better treatment for COVID-19.