Beware! COVID-19 damages the immune system. Coronavirus patients have difficulty breathing, which in serious cases requires hospitalization and ventilation in the hospital. Researchers from Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev in Beersheba have been able to identify a major cause of coronary heart disease, which is also reflected in a storm in the immune system that accompanies COVID-19 infection.
To do this, using a method based on computational biology, the researchers analyzed for a year the expression of genes in the genetic system of 524 patients and 157 healthy controls from around the world. Their hypothesis – that the body’s energy economy was affected by the disease – was confirmed, but surprisingly the main damage was not observed in the lung cells, but rather in the cells of the immune system.
The study was published in the online journal iScience under the title “Immune system cells from COVID-19 patients display compromised mitochondrial-nuclear expression co-regulation and rewiring toward glycolysis.”
In the laboratory of Prof. Dan Mishmar, president of the Israel Genetics Society and head of the genetics and genomics department at BGU’s Life Sciences Faculty, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, mitochondria – structures in cells that produce energy – are considered a key player in proper bodily functioning. Therefore, the research team examined whether mitochondria are damaged during illness. The answer was definitely yes, but surprisingly, the damage was not to the lung cells but to the cells of the immune system.
When examining how the disease progresses, they identified a phenomenon called the “cytokine storm” that involves symptoms including fever, swelling and extreme fatigue. The researchers suggested that the cytokine storm indicates damage to the immune system, and in the case of the coronary disease, it is significantly affected by damage to the mitochondria. “We hypothesized that because the cytokine storm is an integral part of the disease and leads to a severe condition, it involves the immune system,” said Mishmar.
Doctoral student Hadar Medini examined for a year the mitochondrial gene control among COVID-19 patients. By analyzing bioinformatics data, including testing of the genetic material in tissues and individual cells, she discovered in a computational biology-based method that mitochondrial control was particularly impaired in immune system cells. “Before conducting cell experiments, one should look at the existing information,” Medini said. “We got more and more results that supported our hypothesis and realized that as the figure repeats itself, it is a phenomenon.”
Now that the surprising results have been obtained, the direction of thinking can be changed and patients can be offered mitochondrial therapy. “The treatments already exist; you just have to switch the way of thinking to make it easier for the patients,” concluded Mishmar.
