Project description:Aberrantly remodeled vasculature in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) features a prominent inflammatory cell infiltrate suggesting that immune effector cells may contribute to disease progression. Global expression studies of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and whole blood have attempted to better define this inflammatory component of PAH pathobiology.
Project description:Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a relatively common manifestation of systemic atherosclerosis that leads to progressive narrowing of the lumen of leg arteries. Circulating monocytes are in contact with the arterial wall and can serve as reporters of vascular pathology in the setting of PAD. We performed gene expression analysis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) in patients with PAD and controls without PAD to identify differentially regulated genes. We identified 87 genes differentially expressed in the setting of PAD; 40 genes were upregulated and 47 genes were downregulated. We employed an integrated bioinformatics pipeline coupled with literature curation to characterize the functional coherence of differentially regulated genes. Notably, upregulated genes mediate immune response, inflammation, apoptosis, stress response, phosphorylation, hemostasis, platelet activation and platelet aggregation. Downregulated genes included several genes from the zinc finger family that are involved in transcriptional regulation. These results provide insights into molecular mechanisms relevant to the pathophysiology of PAD.
Project description:Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) is characterized by progressive increase in pulmonary vascular resistance, right ventricular failure and premature death. Owing to severe complications, lung biopsies cannot be envisioned to characterize the disease. Based on the prominent role of inflammation in PAH development, we used Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs) as cell source, and relied on the SOLiD platform of Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) for transcriptional profiling