Molecular consequences of SARS-CoV-2 liver tropism

DOI

Extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19 have gained attention, not only due to their links to clinical outcomes, but also due to their potential long-term sequelae. Recent evidence has shown multi-organ tropism of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), including heart, kidney and liver. Previous studies have shown that close to 20% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 develop liver injury, showing an association to disease severity. Here, we characterized SARS-CoV-2 liver tropism in autopsy samples, based on the expression of cell-entry facilitators in parenchymal cells, clinical polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positivity, subgenomic SARS-CoV-2 identification using RNA sequencing, and viral RNA detection by in situ hybridization. Next, we unraveled the transcriptomic  landscape of SARS-CoV-2 liver tropism, revealing significant increases in interferon alpha and gamma signaling and compensatory liver-specific metabolic regulation. While these results reflect changes in tissues from patients with severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, the profound molecular alterations raise questions about the potential long-term consequences of COVID-19 infection.   

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.8358
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.8357
Metadata Access https://www.fdr.uni-hamburg.de/oai2d?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:fdr.uni-hamburg.de:8358
Provenance
Creator Wanner, Nicola ORCID logo; Andrieux, Geoffroy ORCID logo; Puelles, Victor G ORCID logo
Publisher Universität Hamburg
Publication Year 2020
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; Open Access; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Other