Histone modifications underlie monocyte dysregulation in Systemic Sclerosis patients, underlining the treatment potential of epigenetic targeting [RNA-seq]. Histone modifications underlie monocyte dysregulation in Systemic Sclerosis patients, underlining the treatment potential of epigenetic targeting [RNA-seq]

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a chronic autoimmune disease that mainly affects the connective tissue. Monocytes have been shown to be an important cell type involved in the pathogenesis of SSc. By performing RNA-sequencing analysis on whole RNA isolated from peripheral blood CD14+ monocytes obtained from SSc patients, together with healthy controls matched for sex and age, obtained from the University Medical Center Utrecht (definite SSc cohort), and the University of Milan (non-fibrotic SSc cohort), we aimed to characterize the transcriptomic landscape of monocytes of patients with (pre-clinical) systemic sclerosis. Moreover, ChIPseq data was available for a part of the subjects included in the RNA-seq analysis and the correlation between the histone marks and gene expression was studied. The samples used in this study are part of the SYSCLASS cohort. Overall design: Transcriptomic profiling was performed for two SSc cohorts. For the definite SSc cohort (Utrecht) total RNA from 9 heathy controls and 25 SSc patients were subjected to RNA-seq analysis. For the non-fibrotic SSc cohort (Milan) total RNA from 9 heathy controls and 30 pre-clinical SSc patients were subjected to RNA-seq analysis.