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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Inflammation
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1506214
This article is part of the Research Topic Exploring Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Diseases Interaction with Inflammation: Biomarkers, Drug Targets, and Personalized Treatments through Multi-omics Data Integration View all 8 articles

New Insights into Roles of IL-7R Gene as a Diagnostic Biomarker for Post-stroke Depression

Provisionally accepted
Mengyu Liu Mengyu Liu 1,2Haochen Sun Haochen Sun 2*Qun Yao Qun Yao 2*Duohao Wang Duohao Wang 2Jihong Zhang Jihong Zhang 2*Xing Ye Xing Ye 2*Xinyang Qi Xinyang Qi 2*
  • 1 Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Southeast University, Nanjing, China, Department of Neurology, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
  • 2 Department of Neurology, Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Post-stroke depression (PSD) is the most prevalent neuropsychiatric complication following a stroke. The inflammatory theory suggests that PSD may be associated with an overactive inflammatory response. However, research findings regarding inflammation-related indicators in PSD remain inconsistent and elusive. This study aimed to screen the diagnostic markers that helps to distinguish between PSD and post-stroke non-depressed (PSND) patients. Methods: Two GEO datasets, including patients with major depression disease (MDD) and controls (CON, GSE98793), ischemic stroke (IS) and CON (GSE16561), were used to analyzed differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and perform enrichment analysis. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and Random Forest analysis were used to screen the candidate hub genes. CIBERSORT was performed to analyze the immune infiltration. We analyzed the proteins that interact with the hub genes using string database, circRNA-miRNA-mRNA ceRNA network of the hub genes using RNAInter, miRWalk, miRDB and Starbase databases, and the drugs that regulate the hub genes by DSigDB database. We further verified the expression of the hub genes using Quantitative Real-Time PCR from the blood of patients and CON. Results: From the screened 394 DEGs, the DEGs were found primarily related to activation of immune response. PPI network and random forest analysis obtained the hub genes: IL-7R. ROC analysis showed that IL-7R had a good diagnostic and predictive effect on MDD and IS patients. The proportions of macrophages M0 and monocytes in patients were significantly higher than those in CON. We constructed PPI network and ceRNA network that related to IL-7R. The perturbagen signatures and computational drug signatures were found that can target IL-7R. The expression of IL-7R in MDD, PSND and PSD patients was lower than that in CON, and the expression of IL-7R in PSD patients was lower than that in PSND patients. Conclusion: These findings indicate that IL-7R may serve as a diagnostic marker to distinguish between PSD and PSND patients, and targeting IL-7R as a therapeutic target could potentially improve treatment outcomes for PSD.

    Keywords: Stroke, post-stroke depression, major depression, Neuroinflammation, IL-7R

    Received: 04 Oct 2024; Accepted: 04 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Liu, Sun, Yao, Wang, Zhang, Ye and Qi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Haochen Sun, Department of Neurology, Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
    Qun Yao, Department of Neurology, Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
    Jihong Zhang, Department of Neurology, Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
    Xing Ye, Department of Neurology, Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
    Xinyang Qi, Department of Neurology, Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.