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Updated: Oct 3, 2025
Immunometabolic Circuits in Infection for Advancing Host Directed Therapies
Published on: September 13, 2024
Gene expression analysis reveals immune and metabolic candidate pathways in the pathogenesis of chronic otitis media
Siran Lin1, Wei Zhang1, Yuzhen Xu1
1Department of Infectious Diseases, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University Shanghai 200040, China.
Objectives:
Chronic otitis media (COM) is a common disease and causes significant hearing impairment in many adults. Our study aimed to investigate the immune response in COM adult patients through RNA sequencing.
Methods:
In this study, we enrolled four adult COM patients and five healthy controls (HCs) to analyze and compare the mRNA signatures in their peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Gene Ontology functional enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analyses were performed on the differentially expressed genes between the COM patients and the HCs. Furthermore, the immune cell proportions of the two groups were estimated by CIBERSORT. The GSE125532, GSE27990, and GSE23140 gene expression profiles were also retrieved and analyzed for comparison with our results.
Results:
Many immune pathways and genes were upregulated in the COM patients, including the IL-17 pathway and NLRP3. Monocytes and macrophages increased (P=0.005 and P=0.033, respectively), and the CD8+ T cells decreased (P=0.033) in the COM patients compared to the HCs. The COM patients' signatures also reflected a hypoxic state.
Conclusions:
Our findings emphasized the roles of several immune pathways and a hypoxic state in interpreting host responses during COM, and may enable the development of novel therapeutic tools for the disease.
