Identification and Validation of IFI44 As a Novel Biomarker for Primary Sjögren's Syndrome

Overview

Journal J Inflamm Res

Publisher Dove Medical Press

Date 2024 Sep 2

PMID 39219820

Authors

Bowen Wei

Qingyun Yue

Yuxiu Ka

Chenyang Sun

Yuxing Zhao

Xiaomei Ning

Yue Jin

Jingyue Gao

Yuanhao Wu

Wei Liu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) is an autoimmune condition marked by lymphocyte infiltration in the exocrine glands. Our study aimed to identify a novel biomarker for pSS to improve its diagnosis and treatment.

Methods: The gene expression profiles of pSS were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The specific differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened by the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), Random Forest (RF), and Recursive Feature Elimination with Support Vector Machines (SVM-RFE). A biomarker was picked out based on correlation and diagnostic performance, the connection between the biomarker and clinical traits and immune infiltrating cells was explored, and the biomarker's protein expression level in the serum of pSS patients was detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network regulated by the biomarker was predicted to verify the reliability of the biomarker in diagnosing pSS.

Results: , and showed prominent diagnostic ability, with the high accuracy (AUC = 0.859) and significance (R ≥ 0.8) of within the training dataset. strongly exhibited a negative correlation with resting NK cells, macrophages M0, and eosinophils, and a positive correlation with activated dendritic cells, naive B cells, and activated CD4 memory T cells. Furthermore, was significantly positively correlated with clinical traits such as IgG, SSA, SSB, ANA, and ESSDAI, with its protein expression level in the serum of pSS patients being notably elevated compared to controls ( < 0.001). Finally, the ceRNA regulatory network showed that hsa-miR-944, hsa-miR-9-5p, hsa-miR-126-5p, and hsa-miR-335-3p were significantly targeted , suggesting that may serve as a dependable biomarker for pSS.

Conclusion: In this study, we dug out as a biomarker for pSS, systematically studied the potential regulatory mechanism of , and verified its reliability as a biomarker for pSS.

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PMID: 39958336 PMC: 11825768. DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1519371.

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