Identification of common key genes associated with Crohn's Disease and IgA nephropathy.

OBJECTIVE

Emerging studies have suggested a strong link between Crohn's disease (CD) and IgA nephropathy (IgAN), but the underlying pathogenesis remains unclear. This led us to explore the common pathogenic genes for the two diseases by originally applying a bioinformatic method.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The CD and IgAN datasets were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The common differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of the two diseases were identified. GO and KEGG enrichment analyses for the common DEGs were further performed. Then, PPI networks were constructed to identify the hub genes. Afterwards, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed to assess the diagnostic value of the hub genes. Finally, the immune infiltrations in the samples were analyzed and the correlation of the hub genes with the immune infiltration was studied.

RESULTS

47 common DEGs were identified between CD and IgAN with the threshold of p-value < 0.05 and |log2FC| > 1. The top 5 GO terms and 5 KEGG pathways were displayed, and the top 10 hub genes were selected. The diagnostic value of these hub genes was evaluated by calculating the area under the ROC curves. Among the hub genes, CXCL2 was not only identified as the common hub gene, but also with the highest diagnostic value. Finally, CXCL2 was verified to be crucially correlated with the immune infiltration in the samples of CD and IgAN.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study identified critical pathogenic genes commonly responsible for the pathogenesis of CD and IgAN, which provided novel biomarkers and promising therapeutic targets for the two diseases. Further experimental and clinical research are needed to verify our results.