Fig. 5.

Transcriptional expression of prototypical interferon stimulated genes (ISGs) -IFI27 and OAS2- correlates with methylation status of their gene promoter regions. RNA from circulating leukocytes obtained from the same COVID-19 positive and negative patients presented in Fig. 4 was used to interrogate expression level of two ISGs. A OAS2 and B IFI27 expression levels are significantly higher in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, which correlates with their gene promoter regions predominant hypomethylation. GAPDH was used as a reference gene; see methods for details. **; p value < 0.01