SCLERODERMA AND IT’S COMORBIDITIES - EXPLORING LINKS BY NETWORK APPROACH

Abstract

Scleroderma is an autoimmune disease characterized by indolent obliterative vasculopathy and widespread fibrosis. The two main morphological manifestations of the disease overlap and may make it difficult to separate activity from damage. Many patients, especially those with the limited subset of the disease, have an indolent course without clear-cut inflammatory manifestations. The aetiology of systemic scleroderma is currently an expanding area of study, since the exact nature of the events underlying this disease remains unclear. It is observed that along with scleroderma a number of other diseases could also occur simultaneously for example myocardial infarction, coronary artery disease, hypertension, osteoarthritis etc. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship of comorbidities of scleroderma at molecular level with the help of shared genes, protein interactions and biological pathways. The expression profile data datasets were obtained from Gene Expression Omnibus. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened, followed by functional enrichment analysis, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network construction and analysis of significant network modules. A diseasome was constructed in this study and individual disease association was analyzed by protein interaction networks. At the end, hub genes were identified and further enrichment analysis was done.