Upregulation of inflammation-related genes in the blood of Huntington’s patients

Blood is a very accessible tissue and as such constitutes a useful source of clinical markers. While it is obvious that metabolic disorders leave a clear mark in blood, it is not so clear whether this is the case for neurodegenerative diseases of the brain. Markers for neurodegenerative diseases are potentially useful to advance our understanding of the mechanisms involved in these diseases but are nearly impossible to obtain from living patients. To find whether altered gene expression could be found in blood of patients with a neurodegenerative disease, we collected blood samples from patients of Huntington’s disease (HD) and analysed their differences versus controls in terms of gene expression by RNA-seq analysis. We observed significant differential expression of a set of genes, with genes upregulated in patients enriched in immune response related functions and inflammatory response. We conclude that it is possible to detect changes in the expression of RNAs in blood from patients of HD and that this reflects the inflammatory pathology associated to the disease. RNA-seq profiles of blood taken from normal controls and Huntington's disease patients Please note that the 'readme' spreadsheet in the 'HTT.fpkm_v2.xls' contains data processing and column header details.