Circular RNA expression profiles of peripheral blood mononuclear cells by microarray analysis in gout patients / 中华风湿病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To analyze the expression of circular RNA (circRNA) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with gout and to explore the possible mechanism of circRNA in the pathogenesis of gout.Methods:Peripheral blood samples of 24 patients with acute gout (AG), 24 patients with intermittent gout (IG) and 24 healthy control subjects (HC) were collected. Three cases of AG, IG, and HC were randomly selected, and the differentially expressed circRNA in PBMCs was screened by human circNA microarrays. The 6 circRNAs with large differences between the two comparison groups were selected, and the relative expression levels of 6 circRNAs in all the collected 72 PBMCs of the study subjects were detected by real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). The significantly differentially ex-pressed circRNA (fold change>1.5, P<0.05) was analyzed by GO analysis, Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis, and its interaction with microRNA (miRNA) was predicted. The median (interquartile range) was used to describe the data, and the Mann-Whitney U test was used for comparison between groups. Results:(1) The microarray analysis results showed that compared with the HC group, the AG group and the IG group had 116 and 41 significantly differently expressed circRNAs, respectively; com-pared with the IG group, the AG group had 105 significantly differently expressed circRNAs. (2) Among the 6 circRNAs verified by PT-qPCR, the expression trends of 5 were consistent with the microarray results. The expression of hsa_circRNA_105034 in the AG group [5.17(4.60)] was statistically significantly different com-pared to the IG [1.68(2.39)] and HC [0.90(0.73)] groups (AG vs IG Z=-4.413, P<0.01; AG vs HC Z=-5.052, P<0.01). (3) Bioinformatics analysis: ① GO analysis found that differential circRNA swere mainly involved in DNA transcriptional regulation, positive cell regulation and protein modification, etc. ② KEGG pathway analysis revealed that differential circRNA might be involved in the immune response mediated by the mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway. ③ CircRNA might affect its inflammatory response by targeting molecules such as miRNA-146a, miRNA-302b and miRNA-23a. Conclusion:There are differentially expressed circRNAs in PBMCs of patients with gout, which may be closely related to the occurrence and development of gout.