Female reproductive tract has low concentration of SARS-CoV2 receptors

  1. Jyoti Goad
  2. Joshua Rudolph
  3. Aleksandar Rajkovic

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Abstract

There has been significant concern regarding fertility and reproductive outcomes during the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. Recent data suggests a high concentration of SARS-Cov2 receptors, ACE2 or TMPRSS2 , in nasal epithelium and cornea, which explains person-to-person transmission. We investigated the prevalence of SARS-CoV2 receptors among reproductive tissues by exploring the single-cell sequencing datasets from uterus, myometrium, ovary, fallopian tube, and breast epithelium. We did not detect significant expression of either ACE2 or TMPRSS2 in the normal human myometrium, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tube, or breast. Furthermore, none of the cell types in the female reproductive organs we investigated, showed the co-expression of ACE2 with proteases, TMPRSS2 , Cathepsin B ( CTSB ), and Cathepsin L ( CTSL ) known to facilitate the entry of SARS2-CoV2 into the host cell. These results suggest that myometrium, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tube, and breast are unlikely to be susceptible to infection by SARS-CoV2.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0243959
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.20.163097: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementMyometrium tissue collection and preparation of the single-cell suspension Normal myometrium was collected from the patients undergoing hysterectomy with informed consent.Randomizationnot detected.Blindingnot detected.Power Analysisnot detected.Sex as a biological variableFurthermore, none of the cell types in the female reproductive organs we investigated, showed the co-expression of ACE2 with proteases, TMPRSS2, Cathepsin B (CTSB), and Cathepsin L (CTSL) known to facilitate the entry of SARS2-CoV2 into the host cell.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    For the uterus dataset, we filtered out cells expressing more than 20% mitochondrial genes and used the standard Seurat pipeline to obtain the cell clusters.
    Seurat
    suggested: (SEURAT, SCR_007322)

    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 OddPub: We did not find a statement about open data. We also did not find a statement about open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.20.163097v1 on bioRxiv