Comprehensive Analysis of Differentially Expressed Genes and Key Pathways in Neuropathic Pain by Spinal Nerve Ligation

Abstract

Background: Neuropathic pain can cause significant physical and economic burden to people, and there are no effective long-term treatment methods for this condition. We conducted a bioinformatics analysis of microarray data to identify related mechanisms to determine strategies for more effective treatments of neuropathic pain.Methods: GSE24982 and GSE63442 microarray datasets were extracted from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database to analyze transcriptome differences of neuropathic pain in the dorsal root ganglions caused by spinal nerve ligation. We filtered the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the two datasets and Webgestalt was applied to conduct GeneOntology (GO) functional analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis of the shared DEGs. String Database and Cytoscape software were used to construct the Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) network to determine the hub genes, which were subsequently verified in the GSE30691 dataset. Finally, miRDB and miRWalk Databases were used to predict potential miRNA of the selected DEGs.Results: A total of 182 overlapped DEGs were found between GSE24982 and GSE63442 datasets. The GO functional analysis and KEGG enrichment analysis showed that the selected DEGs were mainly enriched in infection, transmembrane transport of ion channels, and synaptic transmission. Combining the results of PPI analysis and the verification of the GSE30691 dataset, we identified seven hub genes related to neuropathic pain (Atf3, Aif1, Ctss, Gfap, Scg2, Jun, and Vgf). Predicted miRNA targeting each selected hub genes were identified.Conclusion: Seven hub genes related to the pathogenesis of neuropathic pain and potential targeting miRNA were identified, expanding understanding of the mechanism of neuropathic pain and facilitating treatment development.