Endothelial cell response in Kawasaki disease and Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children

Abstract: Although Kawasaki disease (KD) and Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) share some clinical manifestations, their cardiovascular outcomes are different, and this may be reflected at the level of the endothelial cell (EC). We performed RNA-seq on cultured ECs incubated with pre-treatment sera from KD (n=5), MIS-C (n=7), and healthy controls (n=3). We conducted Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA) using 935 transcripts differentially expressed between MIS-C and KD using soft filtering (un-adjusted p<0.05, >1.1 fold difference). We found seven gene modules annotated as increased TNFα/NFB pathway, decreased Endothelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EndoMT) and EC homeostasis, an-ti-inflammation and immune response, translation, and glucocorticoid responsive gene suppression in MIS-C. To further understand the difference in the EC response between KD and MIS-C, a hard filter was applied to identify 41 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between KD and MIS-C (adjusted p<0.05, >2 fold-difference). Again, the majority was NFB pathway genes including nine upregulated pro-survival genes. Expression levels were higher in the genes influencing autophagy (UBD, EBI3, and SQSTM1). Other DEGs also supported the finding by WGCNA. Compared to KD, ECs in MIS-C had increased pro-survival transcripts, but reduced transcripts related to EndoMT and EC homeostasis. These differences in EC response may in-fluence the different cardiovascular outcomes in these two diseases. Analysis of RNA extracted from human Umbellical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVECs) incubated with sera from KD and MIS-C patients and Healthy control (HC) or no sera (Blank) sequences from the patients with Kawasaki disease using a computational toolbox of two gene signatures,