The Regulating Markers for Brucella spondylitis and Tuberculous spondylitis
Background Exploring the differential mechanism between Brucella spondylitis (BS) and Tuberculous spondylitis (TS) is crucial for the full treatment and management of this disease.Methods Spinal samples of 14 patients with BS, 13 patients with TS, and 13 controls were recruited. Four BS patients, three TS patients, and three controls were randomly selected for high-throughput lncRNAs and mRNAs profiling. Differential expression analysis was performed among the three groups to identify the regulatory relationships between lncRNAs and mRNAs. Co-expression networks and enrichment analysis were constructed for the differentially expressed mRNAs (DEmRs) and differentially expressed lncRNAs (DElncRs). Finally, experiments were conducted using the remaining samples for validation.Results A total of 213 DEmRs and 97 DElncRs were identified as specific to BS. 242 specific DEmRs and 54 specific DElncRs were identified in TS. In the identified 16 co-expression modules, with the black module showing the highest positive correlation with BS and the lightcyan module showing the highest positive correlation with TS, thus identified as key modules. Enrichment analysis revealed that genes in the black module were primarily associated with the Toll-like receptor signaling pathway. Genes in the lightcyan module were mainly associated with Th1 and Th2 cell differentiation, as well as Th17 cell differentiation. We validated the expression of DEmRs in pathways and their associated lncRNAs in this module. Additionally, TLR4 signaling was significantly activated in BS patients, while the proportion of Th17 cells was decreased and the proportion of Th2 cells was increased in TS patients.Conclusion CXCL8, CCL3, and CCL4L2 may be involved in the pathological process of BS through TLR4 signaling. Similarly, HLA-DRB3 and HLA-DRB1 may be involved in the pathological process of TS through the regulation of T-cell subgroups.