Mapping of type 2 diabetes proteins to COVID-19 biomarkers: a proteomic analysis

To determine predictive biomarkers for COVID-19 disease and infection severity, large scale multi-omic analyses have been undertaken in patients with respiratory disease, with and without COVID-19 disease. Biomarkers involved in vessel damage, platelet degranulation, the coagulation cascade and the acute phase response were identified in COVID-19 disease and shown to differ further with increasing COVID-19 disease severity. However, differences in protein expression may differ between patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and controls and T2D patients may have altered markers of coagulation together with altered platelet function resulting in a prothrombotic propensity. Biomarkers, or a combination of biomarkers, specific for COVID-19 disease in T2D would necessarily be independent of differentially expressed proteins in T2D versus controls. Therefore, this proteomic analysis was undertaken in subjects with and without T2D to compare these with the COVID-19 disease-related proteomic biomarkers that have been identified by using shotgun proteomics followed by parallel reaction monitoring, and to determine if any of the protein changes were dependent on glycemia.