No evidence that androgen regulation of pulmonary TMPRSS2 explains sex-discordant COVID-19 outcomes

Mehdi Baratchian; Jeff McManus; Mike Berk; Fumihiko Nakamura; Serpil Erzurum; Sanjay Mukhopadhyay; Judy Drazba; John Peterson; Ben Gaston; Nima Sharifi

The public genomics data repository Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo) was searched for data sets containing expression profiling of samples from non-cancerous human lung and bronchial/airway epithelial cells with samples identified by gender and/or smoking status of subjects. The following data sets were identified: GSE994 (airway epithelial cells from current/former/never smokers), GSE4115 (histologically normal bronchial epithelial cells from smokers with and without lung cancer), GSE7895 (airway epithelial cells from current/former/never smokers), GSE16008 (bronchial epithelial cells from healthy current and never smokers), GSE18385 (large and small airway epithelial cells from healthy current and never smokers), GSE37147 (bronchial epithelial cells from current and former smokers with and without COPD), GSE43696 (bronchial epithelial cells from asthma patients and healthy controls), GSE63127 (small airway epithelial cells from healthy current and never smokers), GSE103174 (lung tissue from smokers and nonsmokers with and without COPD), and GSE123352 (non-involved lung parenchyma from ever and never smokers with lung adenocarcinoma). TMPRSS2, AR, and ACE2 gene expression values were obtained from each data set and analyses for comparisons between groups (for each data set for which gender and/or current smoking status information was available) were performed using R.