Expression data between human degenerative and non-degenerative intervertebral discs. Homo sapiens

Disc Degeneration is a multifactorial disease which cause severe constant chronic pain. The development of disc degeneration could involve both genetic and environmental factors, so it's important to elucidate the difference in gene expression profiles between degenerative and non-degenerative discs from elderly patients and younger patients, respectively. Affymetrix GeneChip Human Genome U133A Array was used to derive gene expression profiles and identified genes that would express at significantly different levels between degenerative and non-degenerative samples. Overall design: Human intervertebral disc tissues were harvested from elderly and younger patients with degenerative disc disease and adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, respectively, for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. One degenerative sample was compared to one non-degenerative sample in the same microarray run, and comparative analyses were performed in triplicate. Gene whose expression levels varied across the samples with a log ratio >0.5 or <-0.5 were selected as the genes related to disc degeneration.

椎间盘退变（Disc Degeneration）是一种多因素致病的疾病，可引发严重的持续性慢性疼痛。椎间盘退变的发生发展涉及遗传与环境双重因素，因此分别阐明老年患者退变椎间盘与年轻患者非退变椎间盘的基因表达谱差异，具有重要研究价值。本研究采用Affymetrix GeneChip人类基因组U133A芯片（Affymetrix GeneChip Human Genome U133A Array）获取基因表达谱，并筛选出退变样本与非退变样本间表达水平存在显著差异的基因。实验总体设计如下：分别从罹患椎间盘退变疾病的老年患者，以及罹患青少年特发性脊柱侧凸（adolescent idiopathic scoliosis）的年轻患者体内采集人类椎间盘组织，进行RNA提取并在Affymetrix微阵列上完成杂交。在同一次微阵列实验中，将一份退变样本与一份非退变样本进行比对，并重复开展三次独立的比较分析。最终选取对数比值（log ratio）大于0.5或小于-0.5的差异表达基因，作为与椎间盘退变相关的候选基因。