Evaluation of the Ankylosing Spondylitis Transcriptome for Oxidative Phosphorylation Pathway: The Shared Pathway with Neurodegenerative Diseases

• Published in: Iranian journal of allergy, asthma, and immunology asthma, and immunology, 2021-09, Vol.20 (5), p.563
• Main Authors: Lari, Arezou, Gholami Pourbadie, Hamid, Sharifi-Zarchi, Ali, Aslani, Saeed, Nejatbakhsh Samimi, Leila, Jamshidi, Ahmadreza, Mahmoudi, Mahdi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ankylosing spondylitis; Arthritis; Dementia; Dementia disorders; Gene expression; Gene set enrichment analysis; Inflammatory diseases; Joint diseases; Leukocytes (mononuclear); Neurodegenerative diseases; Oxidative phosphorylation; Peripheral blood mononuclear cells; Phosphorylation; Transcription; Transcriptomes
• ISSN: 1735-1502; 1735-5249
• DOI: 10.18502/ijaai.v20i5.7406

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a systemic inflammatory disorder of joints and entheses. Recent studies have reported an increased prevalence of dementia in AS patients. However, data for exploring the association between dementia and AS remain uncertain. In this study, enriched pathways and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in whole blood transcription data of AS patients obtained from the gene expression omnibus (GEO) database; using gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and differential expression analysis. Four pathways, including oxidative phosphorylation, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases were significantly enriched in AS patients compared to the controls. We identified 22 common genes among the pathways that showed an increasing trend in AS compared to the controls. Five of them including COX7B, NDUFB3, ATP5PF, UQCRB, and NDUFS4 were the most significant genes which were selected for gene expression analysis; using real-time PCR on RNA contents of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of AS patients and controls (20 samples from each group). The gene expression analysis indicated considerable overexpression of COX7B (p