COVID-19 biomarkers for severity mapped to polycystic ovary syndrome

Large scale multi-omics analysis has identified significant differences in the biomarkers between COVID-19 disease and control subjects. These protein panels target biological processes involved in vessel damage, platelet degranulation, the coagulation cascade and the acute phase response, with greater protein changes dependent on the COVID-19 severity. However, it is observed that in metabolic conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome expressed proteins differ compared to control women and PCOS patients have increased platelet aggregation and decreased plasma fibrinolytic activity, resulting in a prothrombotic propensity, with elevated coagulation markers. Therefore, any biomarkers reflecting COVID-19 disease and its severity would necessarily have to be independent of differentially-expressed proteins relating to other conditions; therefore, this proteomic analysis was undertaken in women with and without PCOS to compare with the proteomic biomarkers recently described in COVID-19 using shotgun proteomics followed by parallel reaction monitoring.