•  
  •  
 

Article Type

Article

Abstract

Background: Although ferroptosis has been identified as a key process in the pathophysiology of ulcerative colitis (UC), there is still little clinical data on ferroptosis-related gene expression. This study examined the expression of GPX4 and ACSL4 in peripheral blood from UC patients in Iraq and assessed their correlation with disease activity. Methods: In this case-control study involving 50 UC patients and 50 healthy controls, the 2-ΔΔ Ct technique assessed relative GPX4 and ACSL4 mRNA expression via quantitative real-time PCR. Disease activity was quantified using the Mayo Clinic Score, with ESR and CRP serving as inflammation indicators. Analyses included receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, correlation analysis, and ordinal logistic regression. Results: When comparing UC patients to controls, GPX4 expression was considerably lower (median: 0.54 vs. 1.00, P = 2.1 × 10–8, rank-biserial r =-0.72), but ACSL4 expression was higher (2.08 vs. 1.00, P = 4.5 × 10–10, r = 0.78). There was an inverse correlation between GPX4 and ACSL4 (r =-0.65, P = 3.3 × 10–7. Increased disease activity was independently linked to lower GPX4 and greater ACSL4 expression, which also connected with CRP, ESR, and Mayo score (P < 0.001). The combined GPX4/ACSL4 model exhibited good discriminative performance, according to ROC analysis (AUC = 0.91; optimism-corrected AUC = 0.89). Conclusion: Altered peripheral blood GPX4 and ACSL4 expression was associated with disease activity and inflammation in Iraqi patients with UC. The above results suggest that ferroptosis-related gene expression may be associated with UC and may have potential as molecular biomarkers, but further validation is needed.

Keywords

Ulcerative colitis, Ferroptosis, GPX4, ACSL4, Disease activity

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Download

Share

COinS