Dataset Information

COVID-19 can lead to rapid progression of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia by dysregulating the immune system: A hypothesis.

ABSTRACT: COVID-19 is a multisystem disease and cause of a global pandemic. Lately, cases of disease progression of HPV-infected CIN under SARS-CoV-2 infection were reported giving rise to the hypothesis of direct virus-infection induced pro-carcinogenic effect of SARS-CoV-2. We herein present a case of rapid progression from HPV-induced CIN 2 to microinvasive carcinoma within three months under COVID-19 without direct virus infection. Histopathologic evaluation, Fluorescence-in-situ hybridization and qRT-PCR against SARS-CoV-2 RNA as well as gene expression analysis were performed from the available FFPE-tissue and accompanied by an analysis of white blood cell differential. No signs of direct SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 typical alterations of cervical tissue were found. As expected, p53 decreased in expression with progression of dysplasia, while APOBEC3A and VISTA showed a decrease in expression contrary to observations in dysplasia progression. PD-L1 was expressed consistently or increased slightly but did not show the expected strong induction of expression. DNMT1 showed an increase in expression in CIN III and a slight decrease in carcinoma, while DNMT3a is consistently expressed in CIN II and decreased in carcinoma. Blood tests after COVID-19 showed substantial reduction of lymphocytes, eosinophils, T-cells, and NK-cells. Our results hint at an indirect effect of COVID-19 on the cervical neoplasm. We conclude that the immune system might be preoccupied and exhausted by the concurring COVID-19 disease, leading to less immunological pressure on the HPV-infected cervical dysplasia enabling rapid disease progression. Further, indirect proangiogenic and proinflammatory micromilieu due to the multisystemic effects of COVID-19 might play an additional role.

SUBMITTER: Becker S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9645588 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

COVID-19 can lead to rapid progression of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia by dysregulating the immune system: A hypothesis.

Becker Sabeth S Jonigk Danny D Luft Angelina A Dübbel Lena L Werlein Christopher C Malik Eduard E Schild-Suhren Meike M

Journal of reproductive immunology 20221109

COVID-19 is a multisystem disease and cause of a global pandemic. Lately, cases of disease progression of HPV-infected CIN under SARS-CoV-2 infection were reported giving rise to the hypothesis of direct virus-infection induced pro-carcinogenic effect of SARS-CoV-2. We herein present a case of rapid progression from HPV-induced CIN 2 to microinvasive carcinoma within three months under COVID-19 without direct virus infection. Histopathologic evaluation, Fluorescence-in-situ hybridization and qRT ...[more]

PMID: 36399874

Similar Datasets

Project description:Around the world, cervical cancer is one of the most common neoplastic diseases among women, and the prognosis of patients in an advanced stage remains poor. To reduce the mortality rate of cervical cancer, early diagnosis and treatment are essential. DNA methylation is an important aspect of gene regulation, and aberrant DNA methylation contributes to carcinogenesis and cancer progression in various cancers. Although 5-methylcytosine (5mC) has been analyzed intensively, the function of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) has not been clarified. The purpose of our study was to identify the molecular biomarkers for early diagnosis of cervical tumors due to epigenetic alterations. To assess the clinical relevance of DNA methylation, we used immunohistochemistry (IHC) to characterize the level of 5hmC in 102 archived human cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) samples and cervical cancer specimens. The level of 5hmC was significantly decreased between CIN2 and CIN3. The progression of cervical tumors is caused by a reduction of TP53 and RB1 because of HPV infection. We observed that Tp53 and Rb1 were knocked down in mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEF), a model of normal cells. The level of 5hmC was reduced in Tp53-knockdown cells, and the expression levels of DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1) and ten-eleven translocation methylcytosine dioxygenase 1 (TET1) were induced. In contrast, there was no significant change in Rb1-knockdown cells. Mechanistically, we focused on apolipoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme, catalytic polypeptide-like (APOBEC) 3B (A3B) as a cause of 5hmC reduction after TP53 knockdown. In the human cell line HHUA with a wild-type TP53 gene, A3B was induced in TP53-knockdown cells, and A3B knockdown recovered 5hmC levels in TP53-knockdown cells. These data indicate that TP53 suppression leads to 5hmC reduction in part through A3B induction. Moreover, IHC showed that expression levels of A3B in CIN3 were significantly higher than those in both normal epithelium and in CIN2. In conclusion, 5hmC levels are decreased between CIN2 and CIN3 through the TP53-A3B pathway. Since A3B could impair genome stability, 5hmC loss might increase the chances of accumulating mutations and of progressing from CIN3 to cervical cancer. Thus, these epigenetic changes could predict whether CINs are progressing to cancer or disappearing.

Project description:In most cases human papillomavirus (HPV) infections are cleared from the cervical cells by the immune system itself, but in a few cases, where there is persistent HPV infection, it can lead to cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) progression and ultimately invasive cervical carcinoma. The cytopathic effect is in general accompanied by chronic inflammation, which produces inflammation cytokines that contribute to DNA damage, and at the same time, aberrations occurred in the host DNA repair mechanisms, thus lead to HPV genomic integration into the host cells which propels cell immortalization. In this study, we reported the genome-wide expression profiles of both microRNAs (miRNAs) and mRNAs from 24 cervical samples with consecutive stages of normal, CIN I (mild dysplasia) and CIN III (severe dysplasia and carcinoma in situ), and presented the SIG++ algorithm which is founded on the evolution process of intermolecular regulation change during disease progression, to identify the significant change of miRNA-mRNA regulations rather than the expression change, across different disease stages, thereupon elucidating the molecular mechanisms of increasing host genomic instability as disease progresses. As reconstructing miRNA differential networks, we found that at each stage of CIN, there respectively exists specific miRNA regulations mediating chronic inflammation persistence, genome instability and cell survival, which coordinately carrys out the integration of HPV genomes into the host cell genomes, and finally results in cell immortalization. Beyond the specific implications for cervical carcinogenesis, this work establishes a new framework for studying the biology of miRNAs in pathogenesis from the perspective of miRNA differential regulation, and helps ensure the comprehensiveness of miRNA-mediated genetic regulatory pathways. There are totally 24 clinical samples in this study comprises three stages: 7 normal cervix samples (HPV-), 9 CIN I samples (HPV+) and CIN III samples (HPV+), where normal refers to the adjacent tissue of early lesions. For each sample, its total RNA was extracted and purified, then separately hybridized to Illumina HumanHT-12 V4.0 expression beadchip (gene symbol) and Illumina Human v2 MicroRNA Expression BeadChip, for examining the expression profiles of mRNAs and miRNAs, respectively.

Project description:Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) is a precancerous condition inducing local lesions on the surface of the squamocolumnar junction of the cervix. Despite the role of vaginal microbiota having been under-discussed, the role of the cervical microbiome and the microbial migration across the reproductive tract involved in CIN was limitedly studied. We aimed to synchronously characterize the dysbiosis associated with CIN in both the cervix and vagina in a Chinese population. Profiling of cervical and vaginal microbiota from 60 CIN women and 60 healthy women was conducted. 16S rRNA sequencing was adopted. By comparing the microbial profiles between different parts of the reproductive tract, our results demonstrated an increased shift of microbial diversity in the cervix compared with that in the vagina for the CIN patients, specifically in CIN 1. Less dysbiosis was found between the CIN patients and controls, in either the vagina or cervix. The microbial community may be modulated by the onset of sexual activity, a known clinical risk factor for cervical neoplasia. Distinct patterns of perturbated bacteria were found in the vaginal and cervical microbiota, in which reduced Actinobacteria-related operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and increased Proteobacteria-related OTUs were found in the vagina and cervix, respectively. A good agreement between the direction of the top-significant perturbated OTUs was observed between the vaginal and cervical microbiome, suggesting a potential microbial migration in the reproductive tract. Enriched genera such as Sphingomonas and Stenotrophomonas were found in cervical microbiota-associated CIN. Multivariate analysis revealed Comamonas, Rhizobium, and Pseudomonas as independent genera contributing to CIN in the cervix. In summary, this study revealed the perturbation of microbiota in the presence of CIN and demonstrated a distinct pattern of characteristic bacteria community between the vagina and cervix involved in the development of CIN.

Dataset Information

COVID-19 can lead to rapid progression of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia by dysregulating the immune system: A hypothesis.

Publications

COVID-19 can lead to rapid progression of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia by dysregulating the immune system: A hypothesis.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets