{"doi":"10.4049/jimmunol.2101099","title":"Characterization of Altered Gene Expression and Histone Methylation in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells Regulating Inflammation in COVID-19 Patients","abstract":"The pandemic of COVID-19 has caused >5 million deaths in the world. One of the leading causes of the severe form of COVID-19 is the production of massive amounts of proinflammatory cytokines. Epigenetic mechanisms, such as histone/DNA methylation, miRNA, and long noncoding RNA, are known to play important roles in the regulation of inflammation. In this study, we investigated if hospitalized COVID-19 patients exhibit alterations in epigenetic pathways in their PBMCs. We also compared gene expression profiles between healthy controls and COVID-19 patients. Despite individual variations, the expressions of many inflammation-related genes, such as arginase 1 and IL-1 receptor 2, were significantly upregulated in COVID-19 patients. We also found the expressions of coagulation-related genes Von Willebrand factor and protein S were altered in COVID-19 patients. The expression patterns of some genes, such as IL-1 receptor 2, correlated with their histone methylation marks. Pathway analysis indicated that most of those dysregulated genes were in the TGF-β, IL-1b, IL-6, and IL-17 pathways. A targeting pathway revealed that the majority of those altered genes were targets of dexamethasone, which is an approved drug for COVID-19 treatment. We also found that the expression of bone marrow kinase on chromosome X, a member of TEC family kinases, was increased in the PBMCs of COVID-19 patients. Interestingly, some inhibitors of TEC family kinases have been used to treat COVID-19. Overall, this study provides important information toward identifying potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets for COVID-19 disease.","journal":"The Journal of Immunology","year":2022,"id":260806,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":15,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.949,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":790709,"name":"Alex Rutkovsky","orcid":"0000-0001-8480-1128","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":602119,"name":"Juhua Zhou","orcid":"0000-0001-7925-0448","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":914959,"name":"Zhong Yin","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":914559,"name":"Julian Reese","orcid":"0000-0002-0460-5766","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":914960,"name":"Timothy Schnell","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":682980,"name":"Helmut Albrecht","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":914560,"name":"William B. Owens","orcid":"0000-0003-3880-4904","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":259020,"name":"Prakash Nagarkatti","orcid":"0000-0003-2663-0759","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":259019,"name":"Mitzi Nagarkatti","orcid":"0000-0002-5977-5615","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":495557,"name":"Xiaoming Yang","orcid":"0000-0002-0410-1699","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":72,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:26:07.666421Z","pmid":"35379747","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}