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. 2023 May;68(5):594-597.
doi: 10.1165/rcmb.2022-0433LE.

Whole-Genome Methylation Sequencing Reveals that COVID-19-induced Epigenetic Dysregulation Remains 1 Year after Hospital Discharge

Joseph Balnis  1 , Andy Madrid  2 , Kirk J Hogan  3 , Lisa A Drake  1 , Anish Adhikari  1 , Rachel Vancavage  1 , Harold A Singer  1 , Reid S Alisch  2 , Ariel Jaitovich  1
Affiliations

Whole-Genome Methylation Sequencing Reveals that COVID-19-induced Epigenetic Dysregulation Remains 1 Year after Hospital Discharge

Joseph Balnis et al. Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol. 2023 May.
No abstract available

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
WGMS differential analysis of age-matched healthy volunteers, 15 acutely ill patients hospitalized with coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and the same 15 patients recalled 1 year after hospital discharge. (A) Schematic of study design and sample collections. See text for details. (B) Clinical characteristics of participants. The raw Short Form Health Survey involves 36 questions that are divided into nine domains. Each domain has a maximal score of 100% based on the participants’ answers, so the optimal score is 900. (C) Circos plot showing the genomic distribution of differentially methylated regions (DMRs) across the human genome. Each chromosome is shown as a different color in the ring. Relative chromosome size is denoted by arc bar length. Hypermethylated DMRs are in red, and hypomethylated regions are in blue. This comparison identified 1,373 DMRs that were differentially methylated within days of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. The Sankey diagram shows the percent distribution of DMRs to standard genomic features. A preponderance of DMRs are observed in gene promoter regions. (D) Circos plot (see C for description) of paired samples 1 year after hospital discharge versus during hospitalization with severe COVID-19. The paired comparison identified 115 DMRs differentially methylated 1 year after hospital discharge. The Sankey diagram shows the percent distribution of DMRs to standard genomic features. A preponderance of DMRs are observed in gene promoter regions. (E) A Venn diagram overlapping DMRs from the comparisons made in C and D identified 77 DMRs that return to baseline levels of methylation after acute infection and 1,296 covid-induced DMRs that do not return to baseline in patients after 1 year of follow-up. Metascape analysis of the genes with DMRs that do not return to baseline in patients recalled 1 year after discharge with terms that correspond to cell activation and immune response. A heat map of the methylation z-score of the 1,296 unrestored DMRs for the three populations shows DMRs that do not recover to baseline DNA methylation levels 1 year after acute COVID-19 infection. IQR = interquartile range; N/A = not applicable; UTR = untranslated region; WGMS = whole-genome methylation sequencing.
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References

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