Peer Review #1 of "Integrated analysis of ischemic stroke datasets revealed sex and age difference in anti-stroke targets (v0.2)"

Abstract

Ischemic stroke is a common neurological disorder and the burden in the world is growing. This study aims to explore the effect of sex and age difference on ischemic stroke using an integrated microarray datasets. The results showed a dramatic difference in whole gene expression profiles and influenced pathways between male and female, and also in the old and young individuals. Furthermore, compared with old male, old female patients showed more serious biological function damage. However, female showed less affected pathways than male in young subjects. Functional interaction networks showed these differential expression genes were mostly related to immune and inflammation-related functions. In addition, we found ARG1 and MMP9 were up-regulated in total and all subgroups. Importantly, IL1A, ILAB, IL6 and TNF and other anti-stroke target genes were up-regulated in males. However, these anti-stroke target genes showed low expression in females. This study found huge sex and age differences in ischemic stroke especially the opposite expression of anti-stroke target genes. Future studies are needed to uncover these pathological mechanisms, and to take appropriate pre-prevention, treatment and rehabilitation measures.