Single-cell sequencing reveals peritoneal environment and insights into fibrosis in CAPD patients

Wenxue Hu; Guanglan Li; Wei Dong; Peng He; Wei Liu; Yanhua Wu; Huaban Liang; Feng Wen; Feng Yu; Yan Yin; Zhiming Ye; Wenke Hao; Xinling Liang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106336

Single-cell sequencing reveals peritoneal environment and insights into fibrosis in CAPD patients

iScience. 2023 Mar 5;26(4):106336. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106336. eCollection 2023 Apr 21.

Authors

Wenxue Hu^{1

2}, Guanglan Li^{1

2}, Wei Dong¹, Peng He³, Wei Liu^{1

2}, Yanhua Wu^{1

2}, Huaban Liang¹, Feng Wen¹, Feng Yu^{1

2}, Yan Yin¹, Zhiming Ye¹, Wenke Hao^{1

2}, Xinling Liang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nephrology, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital (Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences), Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510080, China.
² Institute of Geriatrics, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital (Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences), Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
³ Department of Microbiology, Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangzhou 510440, China.

Abstract

Long-term peritoneal dialysis (PD) is associated with the development of peritoneal fibrosis (PF). Understanding the changes of immune environments and peritoneal mesothelial cells (PMCs) may lead to the discovery of mechanisms of PF. Therefore, we used single-cell RNA sequencing to interrogate cell composition and transcriptome characteristics in dialysate of continuous ambulatory PD (CAPD) patients at different stages. Results showed that six major cell populations were identified in overnight effluent dialysate. Two subsets of macrophages (Macro-c2-SSP1 and Macro-c5-FCN1&SSP1) and PMCs (HSPA1A + PMCs and RPL34 + PMCs) had the property of promoting fibrosis. Long-term patients had higher markers of cytotoxic CD8+T cells. Moreover, the expression levels of fibrosis-related genes were significantly increased and PMCs interacted closely with immune cells in the long-term group (p < 0.05). These data reveal new phenotypes and functional characteristics of immune cells and PMCs in dialysate of CAPD patients with different stages, which provide potential mechanisms and therapeutic strategies for PF.

Keywords: Immune response; Transcriptomics; Treatment.