ALTERED MONOCYTE GENE EXPRESSION AND EXPANSION OF CD14+CD16+ SUBSET IN IgA NEPHROPATHY PATIENTS. Homo sapiens

The basic defect of IgA nephropathy (IgAN) lies within peripheral blood mononuclear cells rather than local kidney abnormalities. Previously we showed an altered gene expression in monocytes compared to B and T cells isolated from IgAN patients (Kidney Int, 2010), thus our aim here was to study this subset more closely at genome-wide level. Overall design: total of 35 IgAN patients and 35 healthy blood donors (HBD) were included in this study. Illumina microarray technology was used to evaluate global differences in gene expression between monocytes isolated from IgAN patients and HBD. Bioinformatic analysis was performed with GenomeStudio and Genespring software. The connectivity between genes was evaluated using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis. Aberrantly expressed genes and pathways were then validated on an independent set of patients with RT-PCR western blot and flow cytometric analysis.