Correlation analyses of clinical and molecular findings identify candidate biological pathways in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis

BMC Medicine

Research Article

Heather C Alexander¹  Ann B Begovich¹  Sheng-Yung P Chang¹  Chih-Jian Lih²  Kuang-Hung Pan²  Richard Lin²  Stanley N Cohen²  Sihua Peng³  Xuefeng B Ling³  Qiaojun Wen³  Edward Chen³  Christy Sandborg⁴  Tzielan Lee⁴  Chetan Deshpande⁵  Yue Sun⁵  Claudia Macaubas⁵  Elizabeth D Mellins⁶ 

[1] Celera Corporation, 94502, Alameda, CA, USA;Department of Genetics, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA;Department of Surgery, Stanford University, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA;Division of Pediatric Rheumatology, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA;Program in Immunology, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA;Program in Immunology, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA;Division of Pediatric Rheumatology, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA;

关键词: Arthritis;    Inflammation;    Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA);    Systemic JIA;    Polyarticular JIA;    Transcriptional analysis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1741-7015-10-125

 received in 2012-05-02, accepted in 2012-10-23,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundClinicians have long appreciated the distinct phenotype of systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (SJIA) compared to polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis (POLY). We hypothesized that gene expression profiles of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from children with each disease would reveal distinct biological pathways when analyzed for significant associations with elevations in two markers of JIA activity, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and number of affected joints (joint count, JC).MethodsPBMC RNA from SJIA and POLY patients was profiled by kinetic PCR to analyze expression of 181 genes, selected for relevance to immune response pathways. Pearson correlation and Student's t-test analyses were performed to identify transcripts significantly associated with clinical parameters (ESR and JC) in SJIA or POLY samples. These transcripts were used to find related biological pathways.ResultsCombining Pearson and t-test analyses, we found 91 ESR-related and 92 JC-related genes in SJIA. For POLY, 20 ESR-related and 0 JC-related genes were found. Using Ingenuity Systems Pathways Analysis, we identified SJIA ESR-related and JC-related pathways. The two sets of pathways are strongly correlated. In contrast, there is a weaker correlation between SJIA and POLY ESR-related pathways. Notably, distinct biological processes were found to correlate with JC in samples from the earlier systemic plus arthritic phase (SAF) of SJIA compared to samples from the later arthritis-predominant phase (AF). Within the SJIA SAF group, IL-10 expression was related to JC, whereas lack of IL-4 appeared to characterize the chronic arthritis (AF) subgroup.ConclusionsThe strong correlation between pathways implicated in elevations of both ESR and JC in SJIA argues that the systemic and arthritic components of the disease are related mechanistically. Inflammatory pathways in SJIA are distinct from those in POLY course JIA, consistent with differences in clinically appreciated target organs. The limited number of ESR-related SJIA genes that also are associated with elevations of ESR in POLY implies that the SJIA associations are specific for SJIA, at least to some degree. The distinct pathways associated with arthritis in early and late SJIA raise the possibility that different immunobiology underlies arthritis over the course of SJIA.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ling et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. 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 cited.