Fig. 6

Long-COVID is associated with abnormal proliferation pathways, largely affecting the vascular bed. A Diagram at the left shows a sequence of proliferative signaling pathways mapped on KEGG charts (KEGG Mapper). The top right panel presents graphs depicting the expression of individual markers that belong to the proliferative pathways mediated by VEGF. Comparison has been done among all study groups and statistical significance was established using GraphPad-9, with P-value considered significant if < 0.05 with ANOVA. B Heatmaps reflect global expression levels of the growth-factors that could be responsible for the cell proliferation via receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) membrane receptors. Markers have been manually curated based on literature reports. In the left panel heatmap shows the hierarchical clustering of all markers and in the right panel the similarity matrix based on Pearson Correlation. For data visualization we used Morpheus software from Broad Institute. C Graphs measure the levels of the insulin-like growth factor system (IGF), molecules known to regulate angiogenesis but also to ensure the sustainability of the vascular network. Statistical significance was established using GraphPad-9, and P-value was considered significant if < 0.05 with ANOVA