Preliminary Findings on Post-COVID Cardiovascular Risk: Transcriptional Regulation and Gene Expression Patterns

Abstract

Survivors of COVID-19 are facing a new vulnerability of encountering post-COVID complications, including cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Despite the increasing prevalence of CVDs, post-COVID-induced cardiac abnormalities significantly escalate mortality and morbidity. However, some recent studies have begun to elucidate complex pathological signaling pathways in these conditions, further investigation is required to distinguish key genetic and proteomic regulators in post-COVID states precisely. Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases were used to investigate gene expression profiles in post-COVID-19 patients. The selected data set underwent normalization and PCA using prcomp and limma to visualize the correlation and patterns. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified to evaluate their role in molecular functions, and biological processes by Gene Ontology and KEGG analysis. Moreover, transcriptional regulators of selected DEGs were identified using the TRUST database. The comprehensive consequences from post-COVID patients revealed unique DEGs (five downregulated and two upregulated). Transcriptional factors (TFs) like ATRX, GATA1, and KLF4 have been identified as key regulators of HBA2 gene expression, which could encode crucial components of adult hemoglobin and cardiac functionality in post-COVID conditions. Moreover, immunoregulators NF-κB1 and SLA2 affect inflammatory cascades through the downregulation of the CD69 gene, which may be considered a promising pathway highlighting target sites for ameliorating CVDs in the post-COVID states. The present investigation revealed the promising TFs and DEGs, based on their persuasive biological function, that need to be validated for developing competent health interventions to mitigate the associated cardiac complications at the primary stage in post-COVID incidents.