Identification of key genes potentially related to intervertebral disc degeneration by microarray analysis

Although the pathology of sciatica has been studied extensively, the transcriptional changes in the peripheral blood caused by sciatica have not been characterized.  An Agilent SurePrint G3 human gene expression microarray 8 ╳ 60 K was used to analyse gene expression in whole blood from patients with sciatica compared with healthy volunteers. We recruited 17 patients with sciatica confirmed by magnetic resonance imaging, and 17 healthy volunteers with no clinical evidence of low back pain or sciatica. All patients underwent standard Traditional Chinese Medicine treatment for sciatica according to our medical protocol, including electric acupuncture, massage, moxibustion and Chinese medicine fumigation. Ten millilitres of fasting WB was collected from the left median cubital vein of each participant between 7:00 and 7:30 AM. All WB samples were incubated in a PAXgene Blood RNA tube (BD, USA) for less than 72 h at -20°C and then submitted to Shanghai Bohao Biotechnology Co., Ltd (Shanghai, China) for gene chip hybridization screening. The microarray experiments were performed using an Agilent SurePrint G3 human gene expression microarray 8 ╳ 60 K at Shanghai Biotechnology Co., Ltd (Shanghai, China) following the standard protocol of Agilent Technologies (CA, USA).