Immune response- and viral control-related pathways in the progression of chronic hepatitis B

BACKGROUND

Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is a complicated and dynamic course, and is associated with advanced liver disease. Host immune response against viral infection plays a pivotal role in the progression of CHB. However, it is still uncharted that how the hepatic transcriptomes in patients with CHB are correlated with the clinical phases.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to identify the specific sub-networks across various phases of CHB and infer potential pathways for phenotypic outcome prediction.

METHODS

In this study, we performed the pairwise comparisons of the hepatic transcriptomes of CHB patients under different phases, and constructed the differential co-expression networks (DCNs). We firstly identified the critical genes from each DCN according to the adjacency matrix of the network. Then, the specific sub-networks were digged by iteratively affiliating genes that can increase the classification accuracy, using a snow-ball sampling strategy. Permutation test was implemented to determine the statistical significance of these sub-networks. Finally, each sub-network was given a most significant functional pathway.

RESULTS

We constructed 3 DCNs by pairwise comparing the hepatic transcriptomes among three CHB phases, and systemically tracked 1, 1 and 2 specific sub-networks and pathways, respectively. Relative to immune tolerant phase, TGF-beta receptor signaling in EMT (epithelial to mesenchymal transition) pathway was significantly changed in the immune clearance phase, and nuclear receptor transcription pathway and adenylate cyclase activating pathway were altered in inactive carrier state. The host genes related to DNA strand elongation showed significant difference between the immune clearance phase and inactive carrier state.

CONCLUSIONS

By pairwise comparing the hepatic transcriptomes of CHB patients under a network view, several immune- and viral control-related pathways were identified in this study. These results might serve as a foundation for characterizing the host transcriptomes responded to CHB infection, and hold clues for the development of potential targets for disease control.

Reorganization of cortical individualized differential structural covariance network is associated with regional morphometric changes in chronic subcortical stroke

Patients with chronic subcortical stroke undergo regional and network morphometric reorganizations beyond the lesion site, but the interplay between network and regional reorganization remains poorly understood. We aimed to clarify the reorganization patterns of the individualized differential structural covariance networks (IDSCN) in chronic subcortical stroke and investigate their associations with regional gray matter volume (GMV) changes and functional recovery. Structural MRI from four datasets enrolled 112 patients with chronic subcortical stroke (81 male, age: 55.82 ± 7.79) and 122 matched healthy controls (HC) (74 male; age: 55.28 ± 7.54). Network-based statistics were employed to identify aberrant IDSCN, Spearman correlation was conducted to assess the association between IDSCN and regional GMV alterations, and partial correlation was utilized to investigate the association between abnormal IDSCN and functional recovery. We identified 133 connections with balanced increased and decreased IDSCN. Aberrant IDSCN involved more regions than local GMV alterations, local GMV alteration exhibited intricate correlations with IDSCN, which could explain partly IDSCN reorganization (p < 0.05, corrected). Finally, abnormal IDSCN showed a weak association with long-term clinical recovery (p < 0.01). These findings reinforce the theory of adaptive network reorganization post-stroke and suggest that IDSCN may provide further insights into cortical reorganization and functional rehabilitation beyond regional morphometric measures.