Transcriptome sequencing reveals potential roles of ICOS in primary Sjögren's syndrome

Primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease characterized by exocrine glands damage and extraglandular manifestations. To identify potential biomarkers for the early diagnosis of pSS and further investigate the potential mechanisms in progression of the disease, we combined our previous RNA- sequencing study and four microarrays data to conduct integrative transcriptome analyses in salivary glands (SGs) between the pSS and non-pSS. Differential gene expression analysis, gene co-expression network analysis and pathway analysis were conducted to detect hub gene, which was subsequently validated in peripheral blood. Correlation analysis, single-gene Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were applied to investigate the role of ICOS in pSS and its classification capacity for pSS. Overall design: A total of 16 pSS patients and 13 non-pSS subgroups were recruited to conduct RNA-sequencing with salivary glands