Alternative Pre-mRNA Splicing of Toll-like Receptor Signaling Components in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells from Patients with ARDS

A key physiological feature of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is inflammation. Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling is required to combat the infection that underlies many ARDS cases but also contributes to pathological inflammation. Several TLR signaling pathway genes encoding positive effectors of inflammation also produce alternatively spliced mRNAs encoding negative regulators of inflammation. An imbalance between these isoforms could contribute to pathological inflammation and disease severity. To determine whether splicing in TLR pathways is altered in patients with ARDS, we monitored alternative splicing of and , two genes that function in multiple TLR pathways. The and genes produce long proinflammatory mRNAs (MyD88 and IRAK1) and shorter anti-inflammatory mRNAs (MyD88 and IRAK1c). We quantified mRNA encoding inflammatory cytokines and and isoforms in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 104 patients with ARDS and 30 healthy control subjects. We found that pre-mRNA splicing is altered in patients with ARDS in a proinflammatory direction. We also observed altered isoform levels in a second critically ill patient cohort, suggesting that these changes may not be unique to ARDS. Early in ARDS, PBMC IRAK1c levels were associated with patient survival. Despite the similarities in and alternative splicing observed in previous in vitro studies, there were differences in how and alternative splicing was altered in patients with ARDS. We conclude that pre-mRNA splicing of TLR signaling genes is altered in patients with ARDS, and further investigation of altered splicing may lead to novel prognostic and therapeutic approaches.