Association of endopeptidases, involved in SARS‐CoV‐2 infection, with microbial aggravation in sputum of severe asthma.

To the Editor, COVID-19 can be a serious multisystem disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, and the current pandemic has affected more than 80 million people and caused nearly two million deaths worldwide. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate associations of sputum endopeptidases gene expression with metagenomics composition and whether they could be used to stratify asthma patients according to risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. In contrast, non-T2 asthma, particularly neutrophilic asthma, has been associated with higher ACE2 and endopeptidases (TMPRSS2 and furin) expression as compared with the T2-high phenotype4,5 that might imply a worse outcome with COVID-19 infection. [Extracted from the article]