Background
Esophageal eosinophilia can be proton pump inhibitor (PPI) resistant or responsive, representing two entities known as eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and PPI-responsive esophageal eosinophilia (PPI-REE), respectively. Although they present with similar clinical features, EoE is accepted to be an antigen–driven, Th2-associated allergic disorder, whereas the etiology of PPI-REE remains a mystery.
Objective
In this study, our aim was to investigate the pathogenesis of PPI-REE using a recently described esophageal based EoE diagnostic panel (EDP) composed of a set of 94 esophageal transcripts, and to determine if PPI therapy reverses any esophageal transcriptional abnormalities.
Methods
We evaluated the EDP signature in biopsy samples obtained from adult and pediatric PPI-REE subjects from four institutions and compared the pre and post PPI therapy expression profiles of these subjects with those of active EoE subjects.
Results
The EDP identified EoE from control subjects with 100% accuracy amongst the four clinical sites. Bioinformatic analysis revealed largely overlapping transcriptomes between PPI-REE and EoE, including the genes for eosinophil chemotaxis (CCL26), barrier molecules (DSG1), tissue remodeling (POSTN), and mast cells (CPA3). After PPI-mono therapy, PPI treatment alone almost completely reversed the allergic inflammatory transcriptome of PPI-REE. Furthermore, we identified a set of candidate genes to differentiate EoE from PPI-REE before treatment.
Conclusion
These findings provide definitive evidence that PPI-REE is a disease entity with significant molecular overlap with EoE, suggesting that many subjects with PPI-REE represent a continuum of the same pathogenic allergic mechanisms that underlie EoE and thus may constitute a sub-phenotype of EoE. The ability of PPI therapy to nearly entirely reverse gene expression associated with PPI-REE particularly that associated with classic features of allergic inflammation provides new insight into potential disease etiology and management strategies for patients with significant esophageal eosinophilia.