Affiliations
- The State Key Lab of Reproductive, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Jiangsu Province Hospital, Nanjing, 210029, China.
- Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Affiliated Changzhou No. 2 People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Changzhou, 213000, China.
- Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Affiliated Changzhou No. 2 People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Changzhou, 213000, China. zyf99010111@163.com.
- The State Key Lab of Reproductive, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Jiangsu Province Hospital, Nanjing, 210029, China. xiuli_2266@163.com.
PMID: 34099740 PMCID: PMC8185094 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-90112-x
Abstract
Background: Endometriosis (EMS) is a disease that shows immune dysfunction and chronic inflammation characteristics, suggesting a role of the complement system in its pathophysiology. To identify the hub genes and pathways involved in the pathogenesis of EMS, three raw microarray datasets were recruited from the Gene Expression Omnibus database (GEO). Then, a series of bioinformatics technologies including gene ontology (GO), Hallmark pathway enrichment, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and gene co-expression correlation analysis were performed to identify hub genes.
Results: We identified 129 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in EMS, of which 78 were up-regulated and 51 were down-regulated. GO functional enrichment analysis revealed that the DEGs are mainly enriched in cell adhesion, extracellular matrix remodeling, chemokine regulation, and angiogenesis regulation. Hallmark pathway enrichment analysis indicated the coagulation pathway as significantly altered. In the PPI network, key complement factors such as C1S, C1QA, C1R, and C3 were found to be up-regulated and positively correlated with tissue factor (TF) in EMS.
Conclusion: The overexpression of complement and the positive correlation between complement and TF suggest that the interaction of the complement and coagulation systems may play a role in the pathophysiology of EMS.
