ACE2 Expression is Increased in the Lungs of Patients with Comorbidities Associated with Severe COVID-19

Bruna GG Pinto; Antonio ER Oliveira; Youvika Singh; Leandro Jimenez; Andre NA Goncalves; Rodrigo LT Ogava; Rachel Creighton; Jean PS Peron; Helder I Nakaya

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.21.20040261 doi: medRxiv preprint adenocarcinoma [27] . ACE2 was expressed in 59% of cancer samples and only in 25% of adjacent lung normal samples (Figure 3b ). Among the samples expressing ACE2, the level of the gene was higher in cancer, compared to the adjacent normal lung tissue ( Figure 3b ). In another lung RNA-seq dataset, we compared ACE2 expression between patients with COPD and subjects with normal spirometry [28] . Again, the expression of ACE2 was significantly up-regulated in the disease compared to controls (Figure 3c ). In fact, ACE2 was significantly up-regulated in 6 out of 7 lung transcriptome studies ( Figure 3d -e), suggesting that patients who have COPD or PAH, and even people who smoke, may have higher chances of developing severe COVID-19.