Gene expression profiles associated with cigarette smoking and moist snuff consumption

Abstract

BackgroundAmong the different tobacco products that are available on the US market, cigarette smoking is shown to be the most harmful and the effects of cigarette smoking have been well studied. US epidemiological studies indicate that non-combustible tobacco products are less harmful than smoking and yet very limited biological and mechanistic information is available on the effects of these alternative tobacco products. For the first time, we characterized gene expression profiling in PBMCs from moist snuff consumers (MSC), compared with that from consumers of cigarettes (SMK) and non-tobacco consumers (NTC).ResultsMicroarray analysis identified 100 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the SMK and NTC groups and 46 DEGs between SMK and MSC groups. However, we found no significant differences in gene expression between MSC and NTC. Both hierarchical clustering and principle component analysis revealed that MSC and NTC expression profiles were more similar than to SMK. Random forest classification identified a subset of DEGs which predicted SMK from either NTC or MSC with high accuracy (AUC 0.98).ConclusionsPMBC gene expression profiles of NTC and MSC are similar to each other, while SMK exhibit distinct profiles with alterations in immune related pathways. In addition to discovering several biomarkers, these studies support further understanding of the biological effects of different tobacco products.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov. Identifier: NCT01923402. Date of Registration: August 14, 2013. Study was retrospectively registered.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-017-3565-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Global methylation profiles in buccal cells of long-term smokers and moist snuff consumers

“…However, based on the location of differential methylation of a locus (Figure 4, cg17924476), AHRR expression may be up-regulated in buccal cells of SMK, and the tissue-specific level of gene expression requires further confirmation. Separately, we have shown that AHRR gene expression is upregulated in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells of SMK, relative to MSC and NTC from the same cohort (Arimilli et al 2017). Taken together, the AHRR pathway does not appear to be activated in MSC, suggesting that xenobiotic metabolism is differentially regulated between smokers and smokeless tobacco users.…”

Editorial Commentary: Bad For Your Cuff. Smoking Causes Alterations in Gene Expression Resulting in Inflammation, Fatty Degeneration, and Fibrosis. Or Maybe Not?

“…2 Smoking upregulates inflammatory mediators such as interleukin 6 and Creactive protein levels, possibly causing tissue damage. 3,4 Interestingly, gene expression levels remain elevated even up to 30 years after smoking cessation. 3,4 Not surprisingly, tendon tissue and the rotator cuff are also affected.…”

“…3,4 Interestingly, gene expression levels remain elevated even up to 30 years after smoking cessation. 3,4 Not surprisingly, tendon tissue and the rotator cuff are also affected. Plachel et al 5 have demonstrated that changes in RNA expression profiles were correlated with chronic rotator cuff disorders but most strongly with age and severity of the rotator cuff pathology.…”

Meta-analysis of Gene Expression Microarray Datasets in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

“…We also filtered these search 78 results for datasets that reported the age, sex and smoking status of subjects. With this 79 additional search, we added 3 more datasets: GSE87072 [25], GSE47415 [26], and 22 of the 24 samples are duplicates from GSE47415 [26]. Our demographics files were 94 created to include variables that were reported across all samples (see merged 95 Demographics file DF1 of online supplementary data files) because study annotations 96 had not been uniformly reported in the databases (S1 File).…”