ArticlePloS one2022
RNA Sequencing in COVID-19 patients identifies neutrophil activation biomarkers as a promising diagnostic platform for infections.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Whole-blood transcriptomic findings in emergency department patients with suspected cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome: a pilot study.Journal of cannabis research · 2026Article
- Immune transcriptomic analysis on COVID-19 patients with varying clinical presentations identifies severity markers.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Blood Transcriptome Profiling Highlights the Role of Intestinal Bacterial Translocation in Severe COVID-19.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Methylation patterns of the nasal epigenome of hospitalized SARS-CoV-2 positive patients reveal insights into molecular mechanisms of COVID-19.BMC medical genomics · 2025Article
- Unlocking the Potential of RNA Sequencing in COVID-19: Toward Accurate Diagnosis and Personalized Medicine.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Blood RNA biomarkers and a point-of-care elastase assay for detecting host immune activation in suspected sepsis: Trajectory matters.PloS one · 2025Article
- A Machine Learning Model for the Prediction of COVID-19 Severity Using RNA-Seq, Clinical, and Co-Morbidity Data.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Blood transcriptomics analysis offers insights into variant-specific immune response to SARS-CoV-2.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Hypoxia and Activation of Neutrophil Degranulation-Related Genes in the Peripheral Blood of COVID-19 Patients.Viruses · 2024Article
- Article
- Suppressed transcript diversity and immune response in COVID-19 ICU patients: a longitudinal study.Life science alliance · 2024Article
- A Point-of-Care Diagnostic Platform for Detecting Host Immune Activation due to Infections: Cytocapture of BiomarkersJournal of medical diagnostic methods · 2024Article
- Whole blood transcriptomics reveals the enrichment of neutrophil activation pathways during erythema nodosum leprosum reaction.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Article
- RNAseq of INOCA patients identifies innate, invariant, and acquired immune changes: potential autoimmune microvascular dysfunction.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2024Article
- Bioinformatics approach to identify the hub gene associated with COVID-19 and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.IET systems biology · 2023Article
- Functional immunophenotyping of blood neutrophils identifies novel endotypes of viral response in preschool children with recurrent wheezing.The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology · 2023Article
- Blood transcriptomics analysis offers insights into variant-specific immune response to SARS-CoV-2.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Integrative multi-omics approach for identifying molecular signatures and pathways and deriving and validating molecular scores for COVID-19 severity and status.BMC genomics · 2023Article
- Identification of key differentially expressed genes in SARS-CoV-2 using RNA-seq analysis with a systems biology approach.Cytokine · 2023Article
- Indian food habit & food ingredients may have a role in lowering the severity & high death rate from COVID-19 in Indians: findings from the first nutrigenomic analysis.The Indian journal of medical research · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Infection with the SARS-CoV2 virus can vary from asymptomatic, or flu-like with moderate disease, up to critically severe. Severe disease, termed COVID-19, involves acute respiratory deterioration that is frequently fatal. To understand the highly variable presentation, and identify biomarkers for disease severity, blood RNA from COVID-19 patient in an intensive care unit was analyzed by whole transcriptome RNA sequencing. Both SARS-CoV2 infection and the severity of COVID-19 syndrome were associated with up to 25-fold increased expression of neutrophil-related transcripts, such as neutrophil defensin 1 (DEFA1), and 3-5-fold reductions in T cell related transcripts such as the T cell receptor (TCR). The DEFA1 RNA level detected SARS-CoV2 viremia with 95.5% sensitivity, when viremia was measured by ddPCR of whole blood RNA. Purified CD15+ neutrophils from COVID-19 patients were increased in abundance and showed striking increases in nuclear DNA staining by DAPI. Concurrently, they showed >10-fold higher elastase activity than normal controls, and correcting for their increased abundance, still showed 5-fold higher elastase activity per cell. Despite higher CD15+ neutrophil elastase activity, elastase activity was extremely low in plasma from the same patients. Collectively, the data supports the model that increased neutrophil and decreased T cell activity is associated with increased COVID-19 severity, and suggests that blood DEFA1 RNA levels and neutrophil elastase activity, both involved in neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), may be informative biomarkers of host immune activity after viral infection.
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