Department of Rheumatology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, China.
Department of Cardiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.
BMC Genomics. 2023 Aug 10;24(1):450. doi: 10.1186/s12864-023-09548-2.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is often accompanied by a common extra-articular manifestation known as RA-related usual interstitial pneumonia (RA-UIP), which is associated with a poor prognosis. However, the mechanism remains unclear. To identify potential mechanisms, we conducted bioinformatics analysis based on high-throughput sequencing of the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database.
Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) analysis identified 2 RA-positive related modules and 4 idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF)-positive related modules. A total of 553 overlapped differentially expressed genes (DEG) were obtained, of which 144 in the above modules were further analyzed. The biological process of "oxidative phosphorylation" was found to be the most relevant with both RA and IPF. Additionally, 498 up-regulated genes in lung tissues of RA-UIP were screened out and enriched by 7 clusters, of which 3 were closely related to immune regulation. The analysis of immune infiltration showed a characteristic distribution of peripheral immune cells in RA-UIP, compared with IPF-UIP in lung tissues.
These results describe the complex molecular and functional landscape of RA-UIP, which will help illustrate the molecular pathological mechanism of RA-UIP and identify new biomarkers and therapeutic targets for RA-UIP in the future.
类风湿关节炎（RA）常伴有一种常见的关节外表现，称为 RA 相关寻常间质性肺炎（RA-UIP），其预后不良。然而，其机制尚不清楚。为了确定潜在的机制，我们基于基因表达综合数据库（GEO）的高通量测序进行了生物信息学分析。
加权基因共表达网络分析（WGCNA）分析确定了 2 个 RA 阳性相关模块和 4 个特发性肺纤维化（IPF）阳性相关模块。共获得 553 个重叠差异表达基因（DEG），其中进一步分析了上述模块中的 144 个。“氧化磷酸化”的生物学过程与 RA 和 IPF 最相关。此外，筛选出 RA-UIP 肺组织中 498 个上调基因，并通过 7 个聚类进行富集，其中 3 个与免疫调节密切相关。免疫浸润分析显示，与 IPF-UIP 相比，RA-UIP 肺组织中外周免疫细胞的分布具有特征性。
这些结果描述了 RA-UIP 的复杂分子和功能图谱，这将有助于阐明 RA-UIP 的分子病理机制，并为未来 RA-UIP 确定新的生物标志物和治疗靶点。
