Transcriptional Inflammatory Signatures Differentiate Baseline Health from Acute Pain in Sickle Cell Disease Patients

Abstract

Severe unpredictable acute pain and chronic daily pain causes significant morbidity for individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD). SCD is shown to be a chronic inflammatory disorder. Regulation of the immune response can potentially modulate the inflammatory impact on pain in SCD. We sought to determine the balance between patients’ inflammatory and immune regulatory response and examine whether this balance changes during acute SCD pain. We conducted a cross sectional analysis involving 3 cohorts: 16 SCD patients in baseline health, 27 SCD patients during acute pain and 45 healthy African American controls. Participant plasma was co-cultured with cryopreserved PBMCs from a healthy donor to induce transcription. We identified transcripts that differentiate SCD patients from healthy controls and retained ones differentially expressed that exhibit a fold change >1.4, ANOVA p-value of