Transcriptomic profiling of cardiac tissues from SARS-CoV-2 patients identifies DNA damage

In this study, we investigated the landscape of cardiac tissues collected at rapid autopsy from 7 SARS-CoV-2, 2 pH1N1, and 6 control patients using targeted spatial transcriptomics approaches. The main outcomes for the study were to profile rapid autopsy samples collected from the COVID-19, pH1N1 and normal, non-viral deaths to determine transcriptional changes between the different cohorts. Although SARS-CoV-2 was not detected in cardiac tissue, host transcriptomics showed upregulation of genes associated with DNA damage and repair, heat shock, and M1-like macrophage infiltration in the cardiac tissues of COVID-19 patients. The DNA damage present in the SARS-CoV-2 patient samples, were further confirmed by g-H2Ax immunohistochemistry. In comparison, pH1N1 showed upregulation of Interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs), in particular interferon and complement pathways, when compared with COVID-19 patients. Overall design: In this dataset, we capture GeoMx DSP RNA profiles of myocardial tissue from SARS-CoV2 infected patients aswell as pH1N1 and control specimens