Identification of key genes and pathways in chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps using bioinformatics analysis

Purpose: Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is a prevalent inflammatory disease of yet unknown etiology. The purpose of this study was to uncover key genes and pathways related to the pathogenesis of CRSwNP via bioinformatics approaches. Materials and methods: The gene expression profile of GSE36830 extracted from Gene Expression Omnibus database was used to screen differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between nasal polyp samples and control samples. Furthermore, functional and pathway enrichment analysis was performed using the clusterProfiler package in R language. In addition, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed by STRING database and functional modules were detected using Molecular Complex Dctection algorithm. Results: A total of 538 DEGs (326 up-regulated and 212 down-regulated) were identified. The most significantly enriched pathways for up-regulated and down-regulated genes were hematopoietic cell lineage and salivary secretion, respectively. Moreover, twenty hub genes with high connectivity degrees were selected from the PPI network, such as TYRO protein tyrosine kinase binding protein (TYROBP), G protein subunit gamma 2 (GNG2), CCR7, and CCR3. Besides, six important modules were obtained, which were highly associated with chemokine signaling pathway, Th1 and Th2 cell differentiation, complement and coagulation cascades, cell cycle, systemic lupus erythematosus, and Staphylococcus aureus infection. Conclusions: The results of this study may provide new insights into potential molecular mechanisms of CRSwNP. Nevertheless, further experiments are needed to confirm these findings.