Observational studyFrontiers in immunology2023
Severe COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 severe sepsis converge transcriptionally after a week in the intensive care unit, indicating common disease mechanisms.
Observational study in Frontiers in immunology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Hexosylceramide Species in the Blood Decline in Both COVID-19 and Non-COVID-19 Sepsis.Biomedicines · 2026Article
- Article
- The inflammation-immunosuppression loop as a driver of immune dysfunction and secondary infections in severe COVID-19.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Identification of potential characteristic genes in sepsis utilizing RNA sequencing and gene silence.BMC immunology · 2025Article
- Longitudinal gene expression analysis in COVID-19 sepsis highlights dynamic immune, cellular, and metabolic dysfunction in high severity patients.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Minimalistic transcriptomic signatures permit accurate early prediction of COVID-19 mortality.JCI insight · 2025Article
- Raman Spectroscopy Can Identify Acute and Persistent Biochemical Changes in Leukocytes From Patients With COVID-19 and Non-COVID-19-Associated Sepsis.Biotechnology journal · 2025Article
- A machine learning and centrifugal microfluidics platform for bedside prediction of sepsis.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Interleukin-6 related signaling pathways as the intersection between chronic diseases and sepsis.Molecular medicine (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Review
- Facilitating pathway and network based analysis of RNA-Seq data with pathlinkR.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Antibiotic failure: Beyond antimicrobial resistance.Drug resistance updates : reviews and commentaries in antimicrobial and anticancer chemotherapy · 2023Review
- Persistence is key: unresolved immune dysfunction is lethal in both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 sepsis.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Post-COVID symptoms are associated with endotypes reflecting poor inflammatory and hemostatic modulation.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Introduction: Severe COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 pulmonary sepsis share pathophysiological, immunological, and clinical features. To what extent they share mechanistically-based gene expression trajectories throughout hospitalization was unknown. Our objective was to compare gene expression trajectories between severe COVID-19 patients and contemporaneous non-COVID-19 severe sepsis patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). Methods: In this prospective single-center observational cohort study, whole blood was drawn from 20 COVID-19 patients and 22 non-COVID-19 adult sepsis patients at two timepoints: ICU admission and approximately a week later. RNA-Seq was performed on whole blood to identify differentially expressed genes and significantly enriched pathways. Results: At ICU admission, despite COVID-19 patients being almost clinically indistinguishable from non-COVID-19 sepsis patients, COVID-19 patients had 1,215 differentially expressed genes compared to non-COVID-19 sepsis patients. After one week in the ICU, the number of differentially expressed genes dropped to just 9 genes. This drop coincided with decreased expression of antiviral genes and relatively increased expression of heme metabolism genes over time in COVID-19 patients, eventually reaching expression levels seen in non-COVID-19 sepsis patients. Both groups also had similar underlying immune dysfunction, with upregulation of immune processes such as "Interleukin-1 signaling" and "Interleukin-6/JAK/STAT3 signaling" throughout disease compared to healthy controls. Discussion: Early on, COVID-19 patients had elevated antiviral responses and suppressed heme metabolism processes compared to non-COVID-19 severe sepsis patients, although both had similar underlying immune dysfunction. However, after one week in the ICU, these diseases became indistinguishable on a gene expression level. These findings highlight the importance of early antiviral treatment for COVID-19, the potential for heme-related therapeutics, and consideration of immunomodulatory therapies for both diseases to treat shared immune dysfunction.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.