Patients with dermatomyositis shared partially similar transcriptome signature with COVID-19 infection

Abstract

Dermatomyositis (DM) is an autoimmune disease that primarily affects the skin and skeletal muscle. Virus infection and type I interferon-related signaling pathways play an important role in the pathogenesis of dermatomyositis. In this study, we found that the skin of patients with DM and the skin of patients with COVID-19 have similar transcriptional profiles, and identified key genes involved in dermatomyositis based on bioinformatics analysis. These hub-genes might be served as potential biomarkers for the early diagnosis and therapy of DM, including MX1, ISG15, IFIT3, IFIT1, RSAD2, IFIT2, IFI6, XAF1, IRF9, MX2.

Keywords:

• Dermatomyositis
• COVID-19
• skin
• bioinformatics analysis

Authors’ contributions

Yiying Yang conceived and designed the study, performed the experiments, analyzed the data and drafted this manuscript, as the first author. Hongjun Zhao, and Jie Song performed the experiments. Muyao Guo and Huali Zhang contributed to analysis of the data, and revising of the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Data availability

The data used to support the findings of this study is available from GSE46239 and GSE193068.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81901664, 82070018, 82270097), the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2020JJ5894).