Distinct Cytokine and Cytokine Receptor Expression Patterns Characterize Different Forms of Myositis

Overview

Journal medRxiv

Date 2025 Mar 4

PMID 40034760

Authors

Raphael A Kirou

Iago Pinal-Fernandez

Maria Casal-Dominguez

Katherine Pak

Corinna Preusse

Dilbe Dari

Stefania Del Orso

Faiza Naz

Shamima Islam

Gustavo Gutierrez-Cruz

Elie Naddaf

Teerin Liewluck

Werner Stenzel

Albert Selva-OCallaghan

Jose C Milisenda

Andrew L Mammen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objective: Myositis is a heterogeneous family of inflammatory myopathies. We sought to define the differential expression of cytokines, cytokine receptors, and immune checkpoint genes in muscle biopsies from patients with different forms of myositis in order to characterize patterns of inflammation in each.

Methods: Bulk RNA sequencing was performed on muscle biopsy samples from 669 patients, including 105 with dermatomyositis, 80 with immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy (IMNM), 65 with anti-synthetase syndrome, 53 with inclusion body myositis (IBM), 19 with anti-PM/Scl myositis, 310 with other inflammatory or genetic myopathies, and 37 controls with normal tissue (NT). Myositis clinical groups and autoantibody subgroups were analyzed separately. Expression data was analyzed for 338 genes encoding cytokines, cytokine receptors, and immune checkpoints. Myositis group-specific genes were identified from this list by finding genes that were specifically differentially expressed in one group compared to all samples and compared to NT (α<0.001).

Results: IBM patients had the most differentially overexpressed genes (71) among all clinical groups, including 37 that were IBM-specific. Among the top genes were several involved in type 1 inflammation, including , and . Anti-Jo1 and anti-PM/Scl patients exhibited differential overexpression of a similar set of genes, while dermatomyositis patients exhibited differential overexpression of a different set of genes involved in type 1 inflammation. IMNM patients had the least number of differentially overexpressed genes with no predominant inflammatory pattern.

Conclusion: Each myositis clinical group and autoantibody subgroup had differentially overexpressed inflammatory mediators, including a strong type 1 inflammatory gene signature in IBM.

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