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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Inflammation
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1507083
This article is part of the Research Topic Crosstalk in Ferroptosis, Immunity & Inflammation View all 17 articles

New Insights Into the Ferroptosis and Immune Infiltration in Endometriosis: A Bioinformatics-based Analysis

Provisionally accepted
Lusha Liu Lusha Liu 1Feifei Han Feifei Han 2Naiyi Du Naiyi Du 1Yakun Liu Yakun Liu 1Aihong Duan Aihong Duan 2Shan Kang Shan Kang 1Bin Li Bin Li 2*
  • 1 Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China
  • 2 HanDan Central Hospital, Handan, China

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

    Background: Ferroptosis, a recently discovered iron-dependent cell death, is linked to various diseases but its role in endometriosis is still not fully understood.Methods: In this study, we integrated microarray data of endometriosis from the GEO database and ferroptosis-related genes (FRGs) from the FerrDb database to further investigate the regulation of ferroptosis in endometriosis and its impact on the immune microenvironment. WGCNA identified ferroptosis-related modules, annotated by GO & KEGG. MNC algorithm pinpointed hub FRGs. Cytoscape construct a ceRNA network, and ROC curves evaluated diagnostic efficacy of hub FRGs. Consensus cluster analysis identified ferroptosis subclusters, and CIBERSORT assessed immune infiltration of these subclusters. Finally, RT-qPCR validated hub FRG expression in clinical tissues.Results: We identified two ferroptosis modules of endometriosis, and by enrichment analysis, they are closely linked with autophagy, mTOR, oxidative stress, and FOXO pathways. Furthermore, we identified 10 hub FRGs, and the ROC curve showed better predictive ability for diagnosing. RT-qPCR confirmed that the tissue expression of 10 hub FRGs was mostly consistent with the database results. Subsequently, we developed a ceRNA network based on 4 FRGs (BECN1, OSBPL9, TGFBR1, GSK3B). Next, we identified two ferroptosis subclusters of endometriosis and discovered that they are closely linked with endometriosis stage. Importantly, immune enrichment analysis illustrated that the expression levels of immune cells and immune checkpoint genes were significantly different in the two ferroptosis subclusters. Specifically, the ferroptosis subcluster with stage III-IV of endometriosis is more inclined to the immunosuppressive microenvironment.Conclusions: Our study showed that ferroptosis may jointly promote endometriosis progression by remodeling the immune microenvironment, offering new insights into pathogenesis and therapeutics.

    Keywords: ferroptosis, Endometriosis, WGCNA, Immune infiltration, immune checkpoint genes

    Received: 29 Oct 2024; Accepted: 26 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Liu, Han, Du, Liu, Duan, Kang and Li. 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: Bin Li, HanDan Central Hospital, Handan, 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.