Department of Dermatology, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
Medical Laboratory, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
Biomed Res Int. 2021 Jul 19;2021:5520053. doi: 10.1155/2021/5520053. eCollection 2021.
subspecies (. ) infection induces significant immune responses, resulting in tissue damage. Gene expression plays an essential role in regulating the progression of syphilis infection. However, little is known about the regulatory role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the immune response to . infection. Here, we analyze the differential expression of miRNAs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) between untreated secondary syphilis patients and healthy controls and study the correlation between miRNA expression and clinical features with bioinformatics.
The expression profile of miRNAs was measured by microarray analysis in PBMCs of untreated secondary syphilis patients and healthy controls. Weighted Gene Coexpression Network Analysis (WGCNA) was used to construct the expression of miRNAs and the clinical data of secondary syphilis patients. Gene ontology (GO) and KEGG enrichment analyses were performed on target genes of miR-142-3p.
244 miRNAs exhibited at least 1.0-fold differential expression between secondary syphilis patients and healthy controls. The miRNAs were divided into three modules by WGCNA. The blue module was positively correlated with TPHA, TRUST, duration of disease, and erythema. And in the blue module, the expression of miR-142-3p was significantly higher in secondary syphilis patients than in healthy controls ( = 0.02), which is also close to the clinical features of secondary syphilis. GO and KEGG pathway analyses showed that these target genes of miR-142-3p are correlated with endocytosis and positive regulation of the apoptotic process.
The elevated miR-142-3p expression in PBMCs may play an important role in the immune response to . infection and may be a potential biomarker for secondary syphilis.
亚种（. ）感染会引起强烈的免疫反应，导致组织损伤。基因表达在调节梅毒感染的进展中起着至关重要的作用。然而，关于 microRNAs（miRNAs）在应对感染的免疫反应中的调节作用知之甚少。在这里，我们分析了未经治疗的二期梅毒患者和健康对照者外周血单个核细胞（PBMCs）中 miRNA 的差异表达，并通过生物信息学方法研究了 miRNA 表达与临床特征的相关性。
通过微阵列分析测量 PBMCs 中未经治疗的二期梅毒患者和健康对照者的 miRNA 表达谱。加权基因共表达网络分析（WGCNA）用于构建 miRNA 的表达和二期梅毒患者的临床数据。对 miR-142-3p 的靶基因进行基因本体论（GO）和京都基因与基因组百科全书（KEGG）富集分析。
在二期梅毒患者和健康对照者之间，有 244 个 miRNA 表现出至少 1.0 倍的差异表达。WGCNA 将 miRNA 分为三个模块。蓝色模块与 TPHA、TRUST、疾病持续时间和红斑呈正相关。在蓝色模块中，miR-142-3p 在二期梅毒患者中的表达明显高于健康对照者（=0.02），这也与二期梅毒的临床特征接近。GO 和 KEGG 通路分析表明，这些 miR-142-3p 的靶基因与内吞作用和凋亡过程的正调节有关。
PBMCs 中 miR-142-3p 的高表达可能在感染的免疫反应中发挥重要作用，可能是二期梅毒的潜在生物标志物。
