COVID-19 pleiotropy with brain imaging-derived phenotypes highlights novel insights into the biology shared between immune function and brain variation

Clicks: 9
ID: 331515
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Emerging

Ranked #177 of 194 articles by views in Brain communications

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 194 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract This study investigated the pleiotropy and the underlying biology linking COVID-19 outcomes to brain variation, leveraging genome-wide data from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative and multimodal brain-wide magnetic resonance imaging from the UK Biobank. In our analyses, COVID-19 outcomes showed evidence of polygenic overlap with respect to 11 imaging-derived phenotypes (IDP) related to brain structure (e.g., parahippocampal and entorhinal cortical thickness) and connectivity (e.g., Broca’s area and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex). Among these, the genetic liability to COVID-19 hospitalization and SARS-CoV-2 infection was inversely related to the area of pars opercularis. We also identified local genetic correlations between COVID-19 outcomes and brain IDPs within five loci mapping genes involved in inflammatory response, immune regulation, brain development, and neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., LAMP3, SOX2, and TSHZ2). Additionally, we uncovered colocalized variants linking COVID-19 outcomes to brain structural variation (rs13107325 with entorhinal mean thickness) and brain transcriptomic regulation of immune-related genes (e.g., IL6R in brain cortex and HLA-C in caudate basal ganglia). Our drug-repurposing analysis based on gene ontologies shared between COVID-19 outcomes and brain IDPs uncovered 41 compounds, including psychiatric medications that appear to also have antiviral and immunomodulatory activity. Overall, the present findings contributed to dissecting the biological mechanisms shared between COVID-19 and brain variation, highlighting the systemic nature of their relationship.
Reference Key
openalex_W7220686922 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Qianyu Chen, Jun He, Brenda Cabrera‐Mendoza, Ziang Xu, Dan Qiu, Renato A Polimanti
Are you one of these authors? Claim your profile
Journal Brain communications
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/braincomms/fcag372
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcag372
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.