Biological Differentiation of Dampness-Heat Syndromes in Chronic Hepatitis B: From Comparative MicroRNA Microarray Profiling to Biomarker Identification.

Li Wen,Ting-Jun Wan,Yue Su,Di Yan,Quan-Sheng Feng,Gui-Yu Li,Bai-Xue Li,Hua Ye,Dong Wang,Cen Jiang,Xi-Yang Liu,Li-Jun Rong

doi:10.1155/2020/7234893

Abstract

Increasing interest is aroused by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) based on specific TCM syndrome. As the most common CHB syndromes, spleen-stomach dampness-heat (SSDH) syndrome and liver-gallbladder dampness-heat (LGDH) syndrome are still apt to be confused in TCM diagnosis, greatly hindering the stable exertion of TCM effectiveness. It is urgently needed to provide objective and biological evidences for differentiation and identification of the two significant syndromes. In this study, microRNA (miRNA) microarray analyses coupled with bioinformatics were employed for comparative miRNA profiling of SSDH and LGDH patients. It was found that the two syndromes had both the same and different significantly differentially expressed miRNAs (SDE-miRNAs). Commonness and specificity were also both found between their SDE-miRNA-based bioinformatics analyses, including Hierarchical Clustering, Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways, and miRNA-GO/pathway networks. Furthermore, syndrome-specific SDE-miRNAs were identified as the potential biomarkers, including hsa-miR-1273g-3p and hsa-miR-4419b for SSDH as well as hsa-miR-129-1-3p and hsa-miR-129-2-3p for LGDH. All these laid biological and clinical bases for classification and diagnosis of the two significant CHB dampness-heat syndromes including SSDH and LGDH, providing more opportunities for better application of TCM efficacy and superiority in CHB treatment.

Highlights

Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is a potentially life-threatening liver disease caused by hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection
According to the quantitative data of the identified miRNAs in microarray analysis, those with the fold change (FC) > 2 and P < 0.05 compared with the healthy control (HC) group were screened as the SDE-miRNAs, which were considered to be more valuable for further bioinformatics analysis [20]
7 SDE-miRNAs were upregulated, and 3 SDEmiRNAs were downregulated in the spleen-stomach dampness-heat (SSDH) group (Supplementary Table S2), while 12 SDE-miRNAs were upregulated in the liver-gallbladder dampness-heat (LGDH) group (Supplementary Table S3)

Summary

Introduction

Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is a potentially life-threatening liver disease caused by hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. It can progress to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), leading to continuously increasing morbidity [1, 2]. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), with thousands of years of effective clinical practice, has become an important complementary and alternative medical system and aroused increased attention [5, 6]. It has been verified that TCM can relieve the clinical symptoms, reduce the liver injury, and slow the disease progression of CHB patients. TCM syndrome ( called “ZHENG”) is the basic concept of TCM theory. It describes special phenotype with comprehensive symptoms and signs of patients at a particular stage of disease [10]. It describes special phenotype with comprehensive symptoms and signs of patients at a particular stage of disease [10]. e identification of TCM syndrome is the key to guide the specific TCM prescription [11, 12]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion