Expression in Peripheral Blood as a Potential Biomarker in Adult Patients with Asthma.

BACKGROUND

Precision medicine is a promising strategy to identify biomarkers, stratify asthmatic patients according to different endotypes, and match them with the appropriate therapy. This proof-of-concept study aimed to investigate whether gene expression in peripheral blood could provide a valuable noninvasive approach for the molecular phenotyping of asthma.

METHODS

We performed whole-transcriptome RNA sequencing on peripheral blood of 30 non-atopic non-asthmatic controls and 30 asthmatic patients. A quantitative PCR (qPCR) validation study of that encodes for CRTH2 receptor, expressed in cells involved in T2 inflammation, was developed in a cohort of 361 independent subjects: 94 non-asthmatic non-atopic controls, 187 asthmatic patients [including 82 with chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis (CRSwNP) and 24 with aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease (AERD)], 52 with allergic rhinitis, and 28 with CRSwNP without asthma.

RESULTS

was one of the most differentially overexpressed genes in asthmatic patients' peripheral blood (-value 2.64 × 10). These results were confirmed by qPCR in the validation study, where transcripts were significantly upregulated in asthmatic patients ( < 0.001). This upregulation was mainly detected in some subgroups such as allergic asthma, asthma with CRSwNP, AERD, eosinophilic asthma, and severe persistent asthma. expression was detected in different blood cell types, and its correlation with eosinophil counts showed differences in some groups of asthmatic patients.

CONCLUSIONS

We found that expression levels could identify asthma patients, introduce a minimally invasive biomarker for adult asthma molecular phenotyping, and add additional information to blood eosinophils. Although further studies are required, analyzing expression levels in peripheral blood of asthmatics might assist in selecting patients for treatment with specific antagonists.