Bioinformatics and systems-biology approach to identify common pathogenic mechanisms for COVID-19 and systemic lupus erythematosus

Abstract

Background

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought a heavy burden to the world, interestingly, it shares many clinical symptoms with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). It is unclear whether there is a similar pathological process between COVID-9 and SLE. In addition, we don’t know how to treat SLE patients with COVID-19. In this study, we analyse the potential similar pathogenesis between SLE and COVID-19 and explore their possible drug regimens using bioinformatics and systems biology approaches.

Methods

The common differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were extracted from the COVID-19 datasets and the SLE datasets for functional enrichment, pathway analysis and candidate drug analysis.

Result

Based on the two transcriptome datasets between COVID-19 and SLE, 325 common DEGs were selected. Hub genes were identified by protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis. few found a variety of similar functional changes between COVID-19 and SLE, which may be related to the pathogenesis of COVID-19. Besides, we explored the related regulatory networks. Then, through drug target matching, we found many candidate drugs for patients with COVID-19 only or COVID-19 combined with SLE.

Conclusion

COVID-19 and SLE patients share many common hub genes, related pathways and regulatory networks. Based on these common targets, we found many potential drugs that could be used in treating patient with COVID-19 or COVID-19 combined with SLE.

Keywords:

• Systemic lupus erythematosus
• coronavirus disease 2019
• bioinformatics
• common differentially expressed genes
• small molecule compound drugs

Authors’ contributions

YLW and YHL wrote the manuscript, XFB and YL provided the ideas for the study, YLW, YHL, and YZ performed the data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the results, XFB provided guidance on the drug screening, and XFB and YL jointly supervised the preparation of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (82001728), 1·3·5 project for disciplines of excellence, West China Hospital, Sichuan University (ZYGD18015 and ZYJC18003)