Network analysis and transcriptome profiling in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with rheumatoid arthritis

The present study aimed to investigate the differential expression of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). High-throughput gene sequencing technology was used to detect the expression of lncRNA and mRNA in three patients with RA (RA group) and normal controls (NC group). A Bioinformatics analysis was used to assess the effects of differentially expressed mRNAs on signaling pathways and biological functions. The selected dysregulated lncRNAs were verified by reverse transcription-quantitative (RT-q)PCR in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with RA and age- and sex-matched controls. A correlation analysis was used to analyze the relationship between lncRNAs and clinical indexes. From the lncRNA sequencing data, significantly differentially expressed lncRNAs between the RA and NC groups were identified by a fold change ≥2 and P