Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Oct 15:336:199214.
doi: 10.1016/j.virusres.2023.199214. Epub 2023 Sep 11.

Long non-coding RNAs ANRIL, THRIL, and NEAT1 as potential circulating biomarkers of SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease severity

Zeynab Rahni  1 , Seyed Masoud Hosseini  2 , Shabnam Shahrokh  3 , Mahsa Saeedi Niasar  3 , Shahrzad Shoraka  3 , Hamed Mirjalali  4 , Ehsan Nazemalhosseini-Mojarad  3 , Mohammad Rostami-Nejad  3 , Habib Malekpour  5 , Mohammad Reza Zali  3 , Seyed Reza Mohebbi  6
Affiliations

Long non-coding RNAs ANRIL, THRIL, and NEAT1 as potential circulating biomarkers of SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease severity

Zeynab Rahni et al. Virus Res. .

Abstract

The current outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global emergency, as its rapid spread and high mortality rate, which poses a significant threat to public health. Innate immunity plays a crucial role in the primary defense against infections, and recent studies have highlighted the pivotal regulatory function of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in innate immune responses. This study aims to assess the circulating levels of lncRNAs namely ANRIL, THRIL, NEAT1, and MALAT1 in the blood of moderate and severe SARS-CoV-2 infected patients, in comparison to healthy individuals. Additionally, it aims to explore the potential of these lncRNAs as biomarkers for determining the severity of the disease. The blood samples were collected from a total of 38 moderate and 25 severe COVID-19 patients, along with 30 healthy controls. The total RNA was extracted and qPCR was performed to evaluate the blood levels of the lncRNAs. The results indicate significantly higher expression levels of lncRNAs ANRIL and THRIL in severe patients when compared to moderate patients (P value = 0.0307, P value = 0.0059, respectively). Moreover, the expression levels of lncRNAs ANRIL and THRIL were significantly up-regulated in both moderate and severe patients in comparison to the control group (P value < 0.001, P value < 0.001, P value = 0.001, P value < 0.001, respectively). The expression levels of lncRNA NEAT1 were found to be significantly higher in both moderate and severe COVID-19 patients compared to the healthy group (P value < 0.001, P value < 0.001, respectively), and there was no significant difference in the expression levels of NEAT1 between moderate and severe patients (P value = 0.6979). The expression levels of MALAT1 in moderate and severe patients did not exhibit a significant difference compared to the control group (P value = 0.677, P value = 0.764, respectively). Furthermore, the discriminative power of ANRIL and THRIL was significantly higher in the severe patient group than the moderate group (Area under curve (AUC) = 0.6879; P-value = 0.0122, AUC = 0.6947; P-value = 0.0093, respectively). In conclusion, the expression levels of the lncRNAs ANRIL and THRIL are correlated with the severity of COVID-19 and can be regarded as circulating biomarkers for disease progression.

Keywords: ANRIL; COVID-19; Long non-coding RNA; MALAT1; NEAT1; SARS-CoV-2; THRIL.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig. 1
The relative expression levels of lncRNAs ANRIL, THRIL, NEAT1, and MALAT1 in moderate and severe COVID-19 patients in comparison with healthy controls.
Fig 2
Fig. 2
The relative expression level of THRIL in non-survivors compared to survivors in severe COVID-19 infected patients.
Fig 3
Fig. 3
ROC curve analysis of blood lncRNAs ANRIL (A) and THRIL (B) for prognosis of disease severity in COVID-19 infected patients.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Abbasi-Kolli M., Nahand J.S., Kiani S.J., Khanaliha K., Khatami A.R., Taghizadieh M., et al. The expression patterns of MALAT-1, NEAT-1, THRIL, and miR-155-5p in the acute to the post-acute phase of COVID-19 disease. Braz. J. Infect. Dis. 2022;26:102354–102362. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Amini-Farsani Z., Yadollahi-Farsani M., Arab S., Forouzanfar F., Yadollahi M., Asgharzade S. Prediction and analysis of microRNAs involved in COVID-19 inflammatory processes associated with the NF-kB and JAK/STAT signaling pathways. Int. Immunopharmacol. 2021;100 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Angioni R., Sánchez-Rodríguez R., Munari F., Bertoldi N., Arcidiacono D., Cavinato S., et al. Age-severity matched cytokine profiling reveals specific signatures in COVID-19 patients. Cell Death Dis. 2020;11(11):1–12. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bond A., Row P., Dudley E. Post-translation modification of proteins; methodologies and applications in plant sciences. Phytochemistry. 2011;72(10):975–996. - PubMed
    1. Chen X., Yan G.Y. Novel human lncRNA–disease association inference based on lncRNA expression profiles. Bioinformatics. 2013;29(20):2617–2624. - PubMed

Publication types