Whole Blood Transcriptome Analysis in Congenital Anemia Patients

Abstract

Congenital anemias include a broad range of disorders marked by inherent abnormalities in red blood cells. These abnormalities include enzymatic, membrane, and congenital defects in erythropoiesis, as well as hemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell disease and thalassemia. These conditions range in presentation from asymptomatic cases to those requiring frequent blood transfusions, exhibiting phenotypic heterogeneity and different degrees of severity. Despite understanding their different etiologies, all of them have a common pathophysiological origin with congenital defects of erythropoiesis. We can find different types, from congenital sideroblastic anemia (CSA), which is a bone marrow failure anemia, to hemoglobinopathies as sickle cell disease and thalassemia, with a higher prevalence and clinical impact. Recent efforts have focused on understanding erythropoiesis dysfunction in these anemias but, so far, deep gene sequencing analysis comparing all of them has not been performed. Our study used Quant 3' mRNA-Sequencing to compare transcriptomic profiles of four sickle cell disease patients, ten thalassemia patients, and one rare case of SLC25A38 CSA. Our results showed clear differentiated gene map expressions in all of them with respect to healthy controls. Our study reveals that genes related to metabolic processes, membrane genes, and erythropoiesis are upregulated with respect to healthy controls in all pathologies studied except in the SLC25A38 CSA patient, who shows a unique gene expression pattern compared to the rest of the congenital anemias studied. Our analysis is the first that compares gene expression patterns across different congenital anemias to provide a broad spectrum of genes that could have clinical relevance in these pathologies.