Exploration of the link between COVID-19 and alcoholic hepatitis from the perspective of bioinformatics and systems biology

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been suggested to purpose threats to health of mankind. Alcoholic hepatitis (AH) is a life-threatening acute and chronic liver failure that takes place in sufferers who drink excessively. During the epidemic, AH has an increasing incidence of severe illness and mortality. The intrinsic relationship of molecular pathogenesis, as well as common therapeutic strategies for two diseases are still poorly understood. The transcriptome of the COVID-19 and AH has been compared to obtain the altered genes and hub genes were screened out through protein–protein interaction (PPI) network analysis. Via gene ontology (GO), pathway enrichment, and transcription regulator analysis, a deeper appreciation of the interplay mechanism between hub genes were established. Finally, gene-disease and gene–drug analysis were displayed to instruct the clinical treatments. With 181 common differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of AH and COVID-19 were obtained, 10 hub genes were captured. Follow-up studies located that these 10 genes typically mediated the diseases occurrence by regulating the activities of the immune system. Other results suggest that the common pathways of the two ailments are enriched in regulating the function of immune cells and release of immune molecules. The top 10 drug candidates have been chosen primarily, some of which have been proved effective in treating AH sufferers infected with COVID-19. This study reveals the common pathogenesis of COVID-19 and AH and assist to discover necessary therapeutic targets to combat the ongoing pandemic induced via SARS-CoV-2 infection and acquire promising remedy strategies for the two diseases.