Based on Gene Expression Analysis: Low-Density Neutrophil Expression Is a Characteristic of the Fast Responders Treated With Guselkumab for Psoriasis

Abstract

Psoriasis is a worldwide chronic inflammatory skin disease. The treatment of disease is usually designed according to its severity. In this research, RNA-seq was performed on 37 patients with psoriasis treated with guselkumab before and after treatment, and the patients were divided into fast responder and slow responder according to PASI score to analyze the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between them. Moreover, The biological mechanism of psoriasis was explored by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis, Gene Ontology (GO) analysis, and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) analysis. And then, this protein-protein interaction network was constructed and 17 DEGs including IL-1β, CXCL8, S100A12 and MMP9 were analyzed by GSVA. DEGs were detected by GO and KEGG analysis of target genes, which were primarily associated with immune response, neutrophil activation, neutrophil degranulation. GSEA reminded that fast responders were mainly involved in low-density neutrophils and abundant NK cells. And the GSVA showed that the DEGs were down-regulated after the early stage of the fast responder and the reverse in the slow responder by GSVA analysis. On the whole, these results indicated that these DEGs may serve as a psoriasis potential diagnostic and predictive biomarkers after been treated by guselkumab.

Keywords: RNA-seq; biomarkers; guselkumab; neutrophils; psoriasis.