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DNA methylation profiles in pneumonia patients reflect changes in cell types and pneumonia severity

ABSTRACT: Immune cell type composition changes with age, potentially weakening the response to infectious diseases. Profiling epigenetics marks of immune cells can help us understand the relationship with disease severity. We therefore leveraged a targeted DNA methylation method to study the differences in a cohort of pneumonia patients (both COVID-19 positive and negative) and unaffected individuals from peripheral blood. This approach allowed us to predict the pneumonia diagnosis with high accuracy (AUC = 0.92), and the PCR positivity to the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome with moderate, albeit lower, accuracy (AUC = 0.77). We were also able to predict the severity of pneumonia (PORT score) with an R2 = 0.69. By estimating immune cellular frequency from DNA methylation data, patients under the age of 65 positive to the SARS-CoV-2 genome (as revealed by PCR) showed an increase in T cells, and specifically in CD8+ cells, compared to the negative control group. Conversely, we observed a decreased frequency of neutrophils in the positive compared to the negative group. No significant difference was found in patients over the age of 65. The results suggest that this DNA methylation-based approach can be used as a cost-effective and clinically useful biomarker platform for predicting pneumonias and their severity.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE192702 | GEO | 2022/03/18

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Vaccination reduces morbidity and mortality from pneumonia but its effect on the tissue-level response to infection is still poorly understood. We evaluated pneumonia disease progression, acute phase response and lung gene expression profiles in mice inoculated intranasally with virulent gram-positive Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype (ST) 3, with and without prior immunization with pneumococcal polysaccharide ST 3 (PPS3), or co-immunization with PPS3 and with a low dose of lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Pneumonia severity was assessed in the acute phase, 5, 12, 24 and 48 h post-inoculation (p.i.) and the resolution phase of 7 days p.i. Primary PPS3 specific antibody production was upregulated and IgM binding to pneumococci increased in PPS3-immunized mice. Immunizations with PPS3 or PPS3 + LPS decreased bacterial recovery the lung and blood at 24 and 48 h and increased survival. Microarray analysis of whole lung RNA revealed significant changes in the acute phase protein serum amyloid A (SAA) between noninfected and infected mice, which were attenuated by immunization. SAA transcripts were higher in the liver and lungs of infected controls, and SAA protein was elevated in serum, but decreased in PPS3-immunized mice. Thus, during a virulent pneumonia infection, prior immunization with PPS3 in an IgM-dependent manner as well as co-immunization with PPS3 + LPS attenuated pneumonia severity and promoted resolution of infection, concomitant with significant regulation of cytokine gene expression in the lungs, and acute phase proteins in the lungs, liver and serum. Each lung RNA sample represented an individual mouse, creating biological repeats for each treatment. In-vivo treatments were as follows: non-infected lung (vehicle-immunized) control (n=5), infected lung (vehicle-immunized) control at 48 hr post-inoculation (n=5), PPS3 and LPS co-immunized lung at 48 hr post-inoculation (n=4) and PPS3 and LPS co-immunized lung at 7 days post-inoculation (n=4).

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DNA methylation profiles in pneumonia patients reflect changes in cell types and pneumonia severity

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