Gene Expression Profiles of HIV/AIDS Patients with Qi-Yin Deficiency and Dampness-Heat Retention

Abstract

Objectives: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) applied in the clinic as a complementary and alternative therapy has helped improve immunity and reduce side effects and symptomatic treatment in patients with HIV/AIDS. However, the mechanisms of TCM syndromes are not clear. Transcriptomics enables the study of such TCM syndromes.Design: This study compared the messenger RNA (mRNA) expressions of healthy persons and patients with HIV/AIDS who had two common TCM syndromes, qi-yin deficiency and dampness-heat retention, to find the difference in HIV/AIDS with TCM syndromes.Results: Comparison with healthy persons identified 113 mRNAs—41 enhanced and 72 decreased—in the qi-yin deficiency group. Additionally, 76 mRNAs were found in the dampness-heat retention group: 14 increased and 62 decreased. Functional genetic analysis of the mRNAs indicated that two TCM syndromes were correlated with cell apoptosis, immunoinflammatory responses, and lymphocyte activation. Differentially expressed mRNAs in the qi-yin deficiency group were obviously associated with cellular activity, communication, protein localization, cellular ion homeostasis, and regulation of cell motion, whereas mRNAs in the dampness-heat retention group were associated with sequence-specific DNA binding, cellular response to stress, and hemopoietic or lymphoid organ development.Conclusions: These results suggest that the formation of different TCM syndromes in patients with HIV/AIDS were founded on biological transcriptomics, which reveal mechanisms of the formation of these syndromes in HIV/AIDS. Differentially expressed mRNAs in two TCM syndrome groups tended to normalize after TCM intervention, which indicates that TCM might remit symptoms by changing genetic expression.

Review on the systems biology research of Yin‐deficiency‐heat syndrome in traditional Chinese medicine

“…In the previous study, we screened serum protein profiles in the rat model of YDH syndrome by using iTRAQ coupled with 2DLC‐MS/MS and validated the protein levels by ELISA. Three proteins were found to be potential biomarkers that may be related to the regulation of cytokines, chemokines release, oxidative stress, and lipolysis in YDH syndrome (Liu, Chen, et al, 2016; Liu, Mao, et al, 2016). Furthermore, YDH syndrome‐treated rats by nourishing Yin and decreasing internal heat were also explored, and it was found that several proteins linked to the immune response, coagulation and complement cascades were altered by the treatment (Liu et al, 2018).…”

“…A series of inflammatory and immune‐related genes were identified, and the target gene IL‐8 was shown to be linked to the pathology of coronary artery disease patients (Ma et al, 2009). The mRNA expression in Qi‐Yin‐deficiency syndrome and dampness‐heat retention syndrome of patients with HIV/AIDS has also been explored, and TCM syndromes were changed with the change in gene expression (Liu, Chen, et al, 2016; Liu, Mao, et al, 2016).…”