Differential Gene Expression in Pain-Related Genes are not Affected by the Presence of Dementia

Prior work has demonstrated differences in the transcriptome between those with and without chronic musculoskeletal pain.

The aim of this study was to explore whether pain-related gene expression is similar between individuals with and without dementia.

This was a descriptive study using a one-time assessment.

PARTICIPANTS/SUBJECTS: A total of 20 older adults living in a continuing care retirement community, 50% of whom had dementia were inlcuded in this study. All were female and the mean age of participants was 89 (SD = 6).

Pain was evaluated based on the PROMIS Pain Intensity Short Form 3a. Whole blood was collected by venipuncture into Tempus vacutainer tubes (3 ml) and the RNA was extracted at the Translational Genomics Laboratory at the University of Maryland Baltimore. Analyses included a differential expression analysis, a weighted gene co-expression network analysis, and a pathway enrichment analysis.

Eighty-three genes were differentially expressed between individuals with and without pain (p <.05). After normalizing gene counts and removing the low expressed genes, 18,028 genes were left in the final analysis. There was no clustering of the samples related to study variables of pain or dementia.

The findings from this study provided some preliminary support that pain-related gene expression is similar between individuals with and without dementia.