Surgical diverticulitis is not associated with defects in the expression of wound healing genes

The development of diverticuli may represent defects in collagen vascular tissue integrity possibly from a genetic predisposition. We evaluated the tissue expression of wound healing genes in sigmoid tissue from youthful patients undergoing surgery for diverticulitis and thus would more likely suffer from a genetic predisposition (SD mean age 39 ± 0.9) versus controls in the form of patients over the age of 50 (mean age 52.9 ± 10.5 years) without evidence of diverticular disease.

The mRNA expression of 84 genes associated with the extracellular matrix, cellular adhesion, growth factors, inflammatory cytokines, and signal transduction was evaluated in 16 SD and 15 control tissues using a Qiagen Wound Healing Array. Vitronectin, the gene protein with the highest potential significance on raw analysis, was further investigated using a Taqman assay with an additional 11 SD (total n = 27) and four control (total n = 19) samples. Statistics were by Student's t and Mann-Whitney tests with Bonferroni correction.

No significant differences in mRNA expression between the SD and control tissue in the 84 measured genes were demonstrated after correction. Vitronectin mRNA expression was downregulated 2.7-fold in SD tissue vs. tissue from non-neoplastic control patients (p = 0.001 raw/0.08 corrected). However, on vitronectin TaqMan analysis, no difference in expression was seen in SD vs. all controls or in all subset comparisons.

The lack of significant alteration in mRNA expression of traditionally associated wound healing genes/proteins in young SD patients suggests that such genes play a minor role in the genetic predisposition to youthful diverticulitis.