Study of ZHENG differentiation in Hepatitis B-caused cirrhosis: a transcriptional profiling analysis

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Wei Zhang¹  Hui Zhang²  Yan Guan²  Qi-Long Chen²  Zhi-Zhong Guo²  Shi-Bing Su²  Yi-Yu Lu²  Yi-Yang Hu³ 

[1] Longhua Hospital, Shanghai University of TCM, 200126, Shanghai, China;Research Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine Complexity System, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 1200 Cailun Road, 201203, Pudong, Shanghai, China;Shuguang Hospital, Shanghai University of TCM, 201203, Shanghai, China;

关键词: ZHENG differentiation;    Transcriptional profiling;    Differentially expressed genes;    Gene co-expression;    Hepatitis B caused cirrhosis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-14-371

 received in 2013-10-14, accepted in 2014-09-29,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIn traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinical practice, ZHENG (also known as TCM syndrome) helps to understand the human homeostasis and guide individualized treatment. However, the scientific basis of ZHENG remains unclear due to limitations of current reductionist approaches.MethodsWe collected the leukocyte samples of three hepatitis B-caused cirrhosis (HBC) patients with dampness-heat accumulation syndrome (DHAS) and three HBC patients with liver depression and spleen deficiency syndrome (LDSDS) for microarray analysis. We generated Gene-Regulatory-Networks (GeneRelNet) from the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of microarray date. Core genes were validated using anther independent cohort of 40 HBC patients (20 DHAS, 20 LDSDS) with RT-PCR.ResultsThere were 2457 mapped genes were differentially expressed between DHAS and LDSDS (Fold change ≥ 2.0, P < 0.05). There were markedly different genes co-expression patterns in DHAS and LDSDS. Furthermore, three differential co-expression genes including purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP); aquaporin 7 (AQP7) and proteasome 26S subunit, non-ATPase 2 (PSMD2) were screened by GeneRelNets, and their mRNA expressions were further validated by real time RT-PCR. The results were consistent with microarray. The PNP (P = 0.007), AQP7 (P = 0.038) and PSMD2 (P = 0.009) mRNA expression is significant difference between DHAS and LDSDS using the non-parametric test. Furthermore, we constructed an mRNA panel of PNP, AQP7 and PSMD2 (PAP panel) by logistic regression model, and evaluated the PAP panel to distinguish DHAS from LDSDS by area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) analysis, which showed a higher accuracy (AUC = 0.835). Gene ontology (GO) analysis indicated that the DHAS is most likely related to system process while the functions overrepresented by LDSDS most related to the response to stimulus.ConclusionsThis study suggested that there are particular transcriptional profiles, genes co-expressions patterns and functional properties of DHAS and LDSDS, and PNP, AQP7, and PSMD2 may be involved in ZHENG differentiation of DHAS and LDSDS in HBC.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Lu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.