Identifying Immune Cell Infiltration and Effective Diagnostic Biomarkers in DCM by Bioinformatics Analysis

Abstract

Background Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a primary cardiomyopathy of unknown etiology that is common in children and older adults. Nevertheless, the absence of noticeable symptoms and suitable biomarkers pose obstacles to the timely detection and management of DCM. Results By comparing samples from dilated cardiomyopathy and controls, 629 differentially expressed genes were identified. Combined with WGCAN results, a total of 13 hub genes were identified by finding the intersection of DEGs and OS-related modular genes. The ROC curve correction results showed that these hub genes had a good predictive ability for DCM, and the GO and KEGG results showed that the hub genes and related genes were mainly enriched in the transmembrane transport of transporters and nucleotide metabolism, suggesting that hub genes induced the occurrence of DCM by affecting normal transmembrane transport and metabolism of genetic materials. The results of immune cell infiltration also showed five types of immune cells (activated B cells, natural killer cells, CD56dim natural killer cells, macrophages, and monocytes) were significantly more infiltrated in the DCM group than in the control group, suggesting that DCM patients have a different immune microenvironment from ordinary people. Conclusion In this study, we used transcriptome technology to study DCM and identified 13 hub genes between the experimental and control groups, and subsequent validation demonstrated the potential of these hub genes as potential biomarkers for DCM. These findings may provide new insights into the clinical diagnosis of DCM.