Peripheral blood RNA expression profiling in illicit methcathinone users reveals effect on immune system

Abstract

Methcathinone (ephedrone) is relatively easily accessible for abuse. Its users develop an extrapyramidal syndrome and it is not known if this is caused by methcathinone itself, by side-ingredients (manganese), or both. In the present study we aimed to clarify molecular mechanisms underlying this condition. We used microarrays to analyze whole-genome gene expression patterns of peripheral blood from 20 methcathinone users and 20 matched controls. Gene expression profile data were analyzed by Bayesian modeling and functional annotation. Of 28,869 genes on the microarrays, 326 showed statistically significant differential expression with FDR adjusted p-values below 0.05. Quantitative real-time PCR confirmed differential expression for the most of the genes selected for validation. Functional annotation and network analysis indicated activation of a gene network that included immunological disease, cellular movement, and cardiovascular disease functions (enrichment score 42). As HIV and HCV infections were confounding factors, we performed additional stratification of subjects. A similar functional activation of the “immunological disease” category was evident when we compared subjects according to injection status (past versus current users, balanced for HIV and HCV infection). However, this difference was not large therefore the major effect was related to the HIV status of the subjects. Mn–methcathinone abusers have blood RNA expression patterns that mostly reflect their HIV and HCV infections.

Peri‐conceptional under‐nutrition alters transcriptomic profile in the endometrium during the peri‐implantation period—The study in domestic pigs

“…Two differentially labelled cRNA samples (which were obtained from normal‐ or restricted‐diet‐fed gilts) were placed on each array (four arrays per one slide; Figure ) in a balanced block design with dye‐swap (Dobbin, Shih, & Simon, ). The use of four independent biological replicates increases the power of the experiment to 80% with a false discovery rate (Lill et al., ; Sikk et al., ) of 0.1, according to the sample size calculations method described by Hu, Zou, and Wright ().…”

A network-based method to evaluate quality of reproducibility of differential expression in cancer genomics studies

“…To ensure the comparability of PRSOG and POG between experiments, we used the significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) method [ 22 ] to identify the list of DEGs for each dataset, using fewer than 1000 DEGs. The false discovery rates [ 23 ] in all datasets were less than 1%, with the exception of an 8.2% false discovery rate in dataset GSE28686 (from a study of the illicit use of methcathinone) [ 24 ].…”

“…Using SAM, we detected 859, 836, 834 and 910 DEGs, respectively, in datasets GSE25041 (study of adipose tissue) [ 29 ], GSE28686 (study of illicit methcathinone use) [ 24 ], GSE30999 (study of psoriasis) [ 30 ] and GSE19743 (study of burn injuries) [ 31 ].…”

“…We used the datasets of human obesity and the illicit use of methcathinone to compare the metric of reproducibility with the breast cancer dataset. Two datasets, GSE36295 [ 25 ] and GSE39004 [ 26 ], described breast cancer, and the remaining two datasets, GSE25401 [ 29 ] and GSE28686 [ 24 ], provided information on human obesity and the illicit use of methcathinone, respectively. GSE25401 included biopsy data from 26 non-obese women and 30 obese women, in which the microRNA from adipose tissue was regarded as the regulator of the production of chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 2 (CCL2) in human obesity [ 29 ].…”

“…GSE25401 included biopsy data from 26 non-obese women and 30 obese women, in which the microRNA from adipose tissue was regarded as the regulator of the production of chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 2 (CCL2) in human obesity [ 29 ]. GSE28686 contained data from 20 methcathinone users and 20 matched controls, representing the study of the RNA expression profiles in peripheral blood samples to reveal the effect of methcathinone on the immune system [ 24 ]. For each medical disorder, we analyzed only data that were available from the same platform.…”