Pyroptosis is involved in the immune microenvironment regulation of unexplained recurrent miscarriage

Unexplained recurrent miscarriage (URM) is a common pregnancy complication with few effective therapies. Moreover, little is known regarding the role of pyroptosis in the regulation of the URM immune microenvironment. To address this issue, gene expression profiles of publicly available placental datasets GSE22490 and GSE76862 were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. Pyroptosis-related differentially expressed genes were identified and a total of 16 differentially expressed genes associated with pyroptosis were detected, among which 1 was upregulated and 15 were downregulated. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analyses indicated that the functionally enriched modules and pathways of these genes are closely related to immune and inflammatory responses. Four hub genes were identified: BTK, TLR8, NLRC4, and TNFSF13B. BTK, TLR8, and TNFSF13B were highly connected with immune cells, according to the correlation analysis of four hub genes and 20 different types of immune cells (p < 0.05). The four hub genes were used as research objects to construct the interaction networks. Chorionic villus tissue was used for quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blot to confirm the expression levels of hub genes, and the results showed that the expression of the four hub genes was significantly decreased in the chorionic villus tissue in the URM group. Collectively, the present study indicates that perhaps pyroptosis is essential to the diversity and complexity of the URM immune microenvironment, and provides a theoretical basis and research ideas for subsequent target gene verification and mechanism research.