Medical Student Cooper Medical School Montville, New Jersey, United States
Disclosure(s):
Sai Batchu, B.S.: No financial relationships to disclose
Introduction: A smattering of evidence implicates infiltrating immune cells in intracranial aneurysms (IA). Particularly, the association between IA development and chronic inflammation has indicated the role of B and T lymphocytes in its pathogenesis. Therefore, the utility of genomic applications for inferring leukocyte cell-type proportions may allow for targeted treatment in various pathologies, including aneurysms. In the current analysis, bulk deconvolution was employed to illustrate the cell-composition types within ruptured and unruptured IA.
Methods: Transcriptomic data resolved from vessel wall tissue of 21 ruptured and 21 unruptured IA was obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database under accession ID GSE122897. TPM (transcripts per million) normalization was performed prior to downstream analysis. An established machine-learning deconvolution algorithm was applied with a validated 547-gene signature matrix of human hematopoietic cell subsets to infer the relative fractions of immune cells present within the original aneurysm tissues.
Results: Bulk deconvolution revealed significantly increased infiltration of plasma cells, CD8+ T cells, and activated natural killer (NK) cells in unruptured IA compared to ruptured IA.
Conclusion : Limitations include the unavailable consideration for, intrinsic to bulk deconvolution methodologies. Still, these data support that specific lymphoid elements may be involved in an inflammatory reaction prior to IA rupture. Additional research is needed to elucidate the interactions of immune subpopulations with the IA rupture process.
