Blood Transcriptome Profiling Links Immunity to Disease Severity in Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1 (DM1)

The blood transcriptome was examined in relation to disease severity in type I myotonic dystrophy (DM1) patients who participated in the Observational Prolonged Trial In DM1 to Improve QoL- Standards (OPTIMISTIC) study. This sought to (a) ascertain if transcriptome changes were associated with increasing disease severity, as measured by the muscle impairment rating scale (MIRS), and (b) establish if these changes in mRNA expression and associated biological pathways were also observed in the Dystrophia Myotonica Biomarker Discovery Initiative (DMBDI) microarray dataset in blood (with equivalent MIRS/DMPK repeat length). The changes in gene expression were compared using a number of complementary pathways, gene ontology and upstream regulator analyses, which suggested that symptom severity in DM1 was linked to transcriptomic alterations in innate and adaptive immunity associated with muscle-wasting. Future studies should explore the role of immunity in DM1 in more detail to assess its relevance to DM1.