Genetic Effects of Covid 19 on the Development of Neurodegenerative Diseases

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS-COV-2, a highly infectious pathogen, genetically similar to SARS-COV is an unprecedented worldwide health crisis. Rapidly accumulating clinical research revealed that COVID-19 is manifested by various neurological symptoms and also affects the brain in many ways including direct infection to systemic inflammation. Which indicates it may substantially increase the incidence of developing neurodegenerative diseases (NDGDs). To discourse this issue we studied the computable frameworks to address the gene expression association of COVID-19 and NDGDs to identify the link among them. We analyzed GEO microarray datasets from COVID-19 and NDGDs including Epilepsy, Stroke, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease. We constructed disease-gene relationship networks and identified dysregulated pathways, ontological pathways, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and protein-drug interaction (PDI) network. We observed that COVID-19 associated genes share 19, 26, 20, 19, 22 differentially expressed genes with Epilepsy, Stroke, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease respectively. Gene expression dysregulation, PPI and PDI relationship networks, different pathways suggest that COVID-19 may have a significant link to the development of these NDGDs. This analysis may help to develop therapeutic strategies and raise awareness about the influence of COVID-19 on the progression of NDGDs.