Identification and Validation of Autophagy-Related Genes in Vitiligo

Vitiligo is a common depigmented disease with unclear pathogenesis. Autophagy is crucial for maintaining cellular homeostasis and has been linked to a variety of autoimmune disorders; however, there have been no reports exploring the involvement of autophagy-related genes (ARGs) in vitiligo using bioinformatics methodologies. In this study, RNA-sequencing technology was used to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and the Human Autophagy Database (HADb) was overlapped to identify differentially expressed autophagy-related genes (DEARGs) in stable non-segmental vitiligo (NSV). Bioinformatics analyses were conducted with R packages and Ingenuity Pathways Analysis (IPA). DEARGs were further confirmed with qRT-PCR. Critical autophagy markers were detected with Western blotting analysis. We identified a total of 39 DEARGs in vitiligo lesions. DEARGs-enriched canonical pathways, diseases and bio functions, upstream regulators, and networks were discovered. qRT-PCR confirmed the significant increases in FOS and RGS19 in vitiligo lesions. Lower microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain (LC3) II/LC3I ratio and higher sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1, p62) expression were found in vitiligo lesions. In conclusion, this study provided a new insight that autophagy dysregulation appeared in stable vitiligo lesions and might be involved in the etiology of vitiligo by taking part in multiple pathways and bio functions.