MicroRNA expression profile associated with COVID-19 severity

Present study was designed to identify specific biomarkers to predict COVID-19 severity. 2 ml of peripheral blood was collected in PAXgene blood RNA tubes from a total of forty three study subjects, divided into four study groups; Dead (n=16), Severe (n=10) and Moderate (n=7) patients and healthy controls (n=10). Small RNA sequencing of these samples was done on Illumina platform. Differential expression (DE) of miRNA (patients groups compared to control) revealed 118 down-regulated and 103 up-regulated known miRNAs with fold change (FC) expression greater or equal to 2 folds and p value less or equal to 0.05. These DE miRNAs were then subjected to functional enrichment and network analysis.Downstream bioinformatic analysis resulted in 31 miRNAs (24 Down-regulated; 7 up-regulated) significantly associated with COVID-19 having AUC greater than 0.8 obtained from ROC curve.