Plasma cell-free DNA promise disease monitoring and tissue injury assessment of COVID-19

  1. Xin Jin
  2. Yanqun Wang
  3. Jinjin Xu
  4. Yimin Li
  5. Fanjun Cheng
  6. Yuxue Luo
  7. Haibo Zhou
  8. Shanwen Lin
  9. Fei Xiao
  10. Lu Zhang
  11. Yu Lin
  12. Zhaoyong Zhang
  13. Yan Jin
  14. Fang Zheng
  15. Wei Chen
  16. Airu Zhu
  17. Ye Tao
  18. Jingxian Zhao
  19. Tingyou Kuo
  20. Yuming Li
  21. Lingguo Li
  22. Liyan Wen
  23. Rijing Ou
  24. Fang Li
  25. Long Lin
  26. Yanjun Zhang
  27. Jing Sun
  28. Hao Yuan
  29. Zhen Zhuang
  30. Haixi Sun
  31. Zhao Chen
  32. Jie Li
  33. Jianfen Zhuo
  34. Dongsheng Chen
  35. Shengnan Zhang
  36. Yuzhe Sun
  37. Peilan Wei
  38. Jinwei Yuan
  39. Tian Xu
  40. Huanming Yang
  41. Jian Wang
  42. Xun Xu
  43. Nanshan Zhong
  44. Yonghao Xu
  45. Kun Sun
  46. Jincun Zhao
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Abstract

COVID-19 is a huge threat to global health. Due to the lack of definitive etiological therapeutics currently, effective disease monitoring is of high clinical value for better healthcare and management of the large number of COVID-19 patients. In this study, we recruited 37 COVID-19 patients, collected 176 blood samples upon diagnosis and during treatment, and analyzed cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in these samples. We report gross abnormalities in cfDNA of COVID-19 patients, including elevated GC content, altered molecule size and end motif patterns. More importantly, such cfDNA characteristics reflect patient-specific physiological conditions during treatment. Further analysis on tissue origin tracing of cfDNA reveals frequent tissue injuries in COVID-19 patients, which is supported by clinical diagnoses. Hence, we demonstrate the translational merit of cfDNA as valuable analyte for effective disease monitoring, as well as tissue injury assessment in COVID-19 patients.

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