Peripheral Blood Cells Gene Expression Profiles from Discordant Monozygotic Twins with Systemic Autoimmune disease (SAIDs)

Gene expression profiling in peripheral blood cells from monozygotic twin pairs with various sytemic autoimmune diseases revealed 92 genes that could discriminate between MZ twin pairs and unrelated-matched controls. No genes were found that could discriminate between proband and unaffected twin pairs, or between the various disease phenotypes. RNA microarray analyses (Agilent Human 1A(V2) 20K oligo arrays) quantified differential gene expression in blood from 20 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs, to minimize polymorphic gene effects, discordant for SAID (six with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), six rheumatoid arthritis (RA), eight idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM)) and 40 unrelated - matched controls. Multiple statistical and pathway analyses were performed to assess differences in profiles of gene expression among the subject SAID groups and controls. ID's -xx-00 = Matched Control 1; xx-60 = second matched control; xx-01 = Affected MZ twin; xx-02 = unaffected MZ twin