Key genes associated with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and acute myocardial infarction

BACKGROUND With the increasing research on non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFLD) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI), many evidences show a tight correlation between NAFLD and AMI, however the underlying pathophysiology is still not clear. This study was to identify the potential hub genes and pathways related to these two diseases via bioinformatic method. MATERIAL AND METHODS Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) dataset GSE63067 of NAFLD patients and normal controls was downloaded from GEO database. The GSE60993 and GSE66360 datasets for AMI patients and healthy controls were also obtained. Differential expression genes (DEGs) of NAFLD and AMI datasets, accompanied with common genes between them were achieved. Further GO and KEGG enrichment analysis for common genes were performed. RESULTS To obtain the pathogenesis associated with both NAFLD and AMI, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed and the top ten hub genes (TLR2, LILRB2, CXCL1, FPR1, TLR4, TYROBP, MMP9, FCER1G, CLEC4D and CCR2) were selected with CONCLUSIONS The results of this study suggesting some novel genes may play an important role in the occurrence and progression NAFLD and AMI. But more experimental researches and clinical trials need to verify.