Coronavirus disease (COVID 19) has been affecting millions of people worldwide as it damages the respiratory system of humans. It is noted that cytokine storm is one of the leading causes of deaths in patients with COVID 19.

Thus, mortality from this deathly virus can be reduced by understanding more about what factors causing this proinflammatory response.

Ramesh and his colleagues conducted an experiment using Gene Expression Omnibus database, STRING v11, differential gene analysis and many other Bioinformatics tools in order to identify the targets. They found that differential expression of two hub genes ELANE and LTF could induce higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the lungs. Consequently, they suggested that suppressing/inhibiting those two genes may help in combating with COVID 19, which in turn will bring down the rate of mortality.

 

Ramesh, P., Veerappapillai, S., & Karuppasamy, R. (2021). Gene expression profiling of corona virus microarray datasets to identify crucial targets in COVID-19 patients. Gene Reports, 22, 100980. doi: 10.1016/j.genrep.2020.100980