Associations between brain gene expression perturbations implicated by COVID-19 and psychiatric disorders.
COVID-19, brain tissues
single-cell RNA sequencing
genome-wide association study summary statistics of psychiatric disorders
schizophrenia
Abstract
Currently, there is increasing evidence from clinic, epidemiology, as well as neuroimaging, demonstrating neuropsychiatric abnormalities in COVID-19, however, whether there were associations between brain changes caused by COVID-19 and genetic susceptibility of psychiatric disorders was still unknown. In this study, we performed a meta-analysis to investigate these associations by combing single-cell RNA sequencing datasets of brain tissues of COVID-19 and genome-wide association study summary statistics of psychiatric disorders. The analysis demonstrated that among ten psychiatric disorders, gene expression perturbations implicated by COVID-19 in excitatory neurons of choroid plexus were significantly associated with schizophrenia. Our analysis might provide insights for the underlying mechanism of the psychiatric consequence of COVID-19.