Comparison of transcriptional profiles of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from AIDS patients and healthy control group

With the purpose of identifying the cascaded miRNA-mRNA regulatory relationships related to infection of HIV in gene level, we extracted mRNA from Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 50 AIDS patients and 7 uninfected health controls. All AIDS patients in sample were received Antiretroviral Therapy. To further analysis the gene expression pattern in different virus load, we classified high virus loads (HVL, n=14) and low virus loads (LVL, n=16). 2635 and 2826 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were selected, respectively in LVL and HVL. Functional enrichment analysis indicated DEGs which involved in immune response and apoptosis, played a crucial role in HIV infection. Further, we identified 5 most influential TFs to build miRNA-TF-mRNA regulatory network. In this study, we have included 8 healthy controls and 50 AIDS patients. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from morning fasting venous blood samples were collected for RNA extraction and were ran on Agilent-014850 Whole Human Genome Microarray 4x44K G4112F (Probe Name version).