Research Paper Volume 15, Issue 11 pp 4625—4641

Figure 2. COVID-19 patients present shorter telomeres in the alveolar type II cells than controls. (A) Box and Whisker plot representation of control and COVID-19 patients’ age within 62 and 84 years old. Differences in age distributions between both control and COVID-19 sample groups was analyzed by Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The p-value is indicated. (B) Representative images of telomere quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization (q-FISH) combined with immunofluorescence against Pro-SPC in a control and a COVID-19 lung samples. (C–H) Box and Whisker plot representation of mean telomeric spot intensity per nucleus (C, F), percentage of long telomeres above 80^th percentile (D, G) and percentage of short telomeres below 20^th percentile (E, H) in alveolar type II (ATII) (C–E) and in non-ATII cells (F–H) in lung sections from control and COVID-19 patients within 62 and 84 year-old age interval. Statistical significance in (C–H) was assessed using unpaired Student’s t test with Welch’s correction and the p-value is indicated. The percent increase or decrease between control and COVID-19 samples are indicated in each plot.