Identification of Potential Autophagy-Related Genes in Steroid-Induced Osteonecrosis of the Femoral Head
Authors: LIANG XueZhen , LUO Di , CHEN Yan-Rong , LI Jia-Cheng , YAN Bo-Zhao , GUO Yan-Bo , WEN Ming-Tao , XU Bo , LI Gang 
Published: November 2021

Purpose: Steroid-induced osteonecrosis of the femoral head (SONFH) was a refractory orthopedic hip joint disease in the young and middle-aged people. Previous experimental studies had shown that autophagy might be involved in the pathological process of SONFH, but the pathogenesis of autophagy in SONFH remained unclear. We aim to identify and validate the key potential autophagy-related genes of SONFH to further illustrate the mechanism of autophagy in SONFH through bioinformatics analysis. Methods: The mRNA expression profile dataset GSE123568 was download from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, including 10 non-SONFH (following steroid administration) samples and 30 SONFH samples. The autophagy-related genes were obtained from the Human Autophagy Database (HADb). The autophagy-related genes of SONFH were screened by intersecting GSE123568 dataset with autophagy genes. The differentially expressed autophagy-related genes of SONFH were identified by R software. Besides, the Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis was conducted for the differentially expressed autophagy-related genes of SONFH by R software. Then, the correlation analysis between the expression levels of differentially expressed autophagy-related genes of SONFH was confirmed by R software. Moreover, the protein–protein interaction (PPI) network were analyzed by the Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes (STRING), and the significant gene cluster modules were identified by the MCODE Cytoscape plugin, and hub genes of differentially expressed autophagy-related genes of SONFH were screened by the CytoHubba Cytoscape plugin. Finally, the expression levels of hub genes of differentially expressed autophagy-related genes of SONFH was validated in hip articular cartilage specimens from necrosis femur head (NFH) by GSE74089 dataset. Results: A total of 34 differentially expressed autophagy-related genes were identified between the peripheral blood of SONFH samples and non-SONFH Samples based on the defined criteria, including 25 up-regulated genes and 9 down-regulated genes. The GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis revealed that these 34 differentially expressed autophagy-related genes of SONFH were concentrated in death domain receptors, FOXO signaling pathway and apoptosis. The correlation analysis revealed a significant correlation among the 34 differentially expressed autophagy-related genes of SONFH. The PPI results demonstrated that the 34 differentially expressed autophagy-related genes interacted with each other. There were 10 hub genes identified by the MCC algorithms of Cytohubba. The results of GSE74089 dataset showed TNFSF10, PTEN and CFLAR were significantly upregulated while BCL2L1 were significantly downregulated in the hip cartilage specimens, which were consistent with the GSE123568 dataset. Conclusions: There were 34 potential autophagy-related genes of SONFH identified using bioinformatics analysis. TNFSF10, PTEN, CFLAR and BCL2L1 might serve as potential drug targets and biomarkers by regulating autophagy. These results would expand new insights into the autophagy-related understanding of SONFH and might be useful in the diagnosis and prognosis of SONFH.