Hidden in plain sight: The effects of BCG vaccination in COVID-19 pandemic
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Abstract
To investigate the relationship between BCG vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 by bioinformatic approach. Two datasets for Sars-CoV-2 infection group and BCG-vaccinated group were downloaded. Differentially Expressed Genes were identified. Gene ontology and pathways were functionally enriched, and networking was constructed in NetworkAnalyst. Lastly, correlation between post-BCG vaccination and COVID-19 transcriptome signatures were established. A total of 161 DEGs (113 upregulated DEGs and 48 downregulated genes) were identified in the Sars-CoV-2 group. In the pathway enrichment analysis, cross-reference of upregulated KEGG pathways in Sars-CoV-2 with downregulated counterparts in the BCG-vaccinated group, resulted in the intersection of 45 common pathways, accounting for 86.5% of SARS-CoV-2 upregulated pathways. Of these intersecting pathways, a vast majority were immune and inflammatory pathways with top significance in IL-17, TNF, NOD-like receptors, and NF-κB signaling pathways. Our data suggests BCG-vaccination may incur a protective role in COVID-19 patients until a targeted vaccine is developed.
Supplementary Materials
( https://drive.google.com/open?id=15Na738L282XNaQAJUh0cZf1WoG9jJfzJ )
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.09.142760: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Gene set enrichment analysis in Tuberculosis pathway (KEGG ID: hsa05152). Gene set enrichment analysissuggested: (Gene Set Enrichment Analysis, RRID:SCR_003199)d upregulated KEGG pathways in SARS-COV-2 infected cells that are reversed following BCG vaccination. KEGGsuggested: (KEGG, RRID:SCR_012773)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationR…SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.09.142760: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Gene set enrichment analysis in Tuberculosis pathway (KEGG ID: hsa05152). Gene set enrichment analysissuggested: (Gene Set Enrichment Analysis, RRID:SCR_003199)d upregulated KEGG pathways in SARS-COV-2 infected cells that are reversed following BCG vaccination. KEGGsuggested: (KEGG, RRID:SCR_012773)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:
Identifier Status Title NCT04347876 Recruiting Outcome of COVID-19 Cases Based on Tuberculin Test: Can Prev… NCT04327206 Recruiting BCG Vaccination to Protect Healthcare Workers Against COVID-… NCT04328441 Active, not recruiting Reducing Health Care Workers Absenteeism in Covid-19 Pandemi… NCT04348370 Recruiting BCG Vaccine for Health Care Workers as Defense Against COVID… NCT04350931 Not yet recruiting Application of BCG Vaccine for Immune-prophylaxis Among Egyp… Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No funding statement was detected.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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