Högskolan i Skövde

Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is a primary immune deficiency present in about 1 in 25,000 people, characterized by recurrent infections, low serum immunoglobulin (Ig) levels (IgG, IgA, and sometimes IgM), and reduced vaccine responses. It is genetically a heterogeneous illness that often affects adults or teenagers and requires lifetime clinical care. CVID patients experience recurrent or chronic sinopulmonary tract infections, gastrointestinal disorders, and malignancies. Ig reconstitution administered intravenously or subcutaneously is the main treatment. Although the fundamental causes of CVID are still undefined, studies suggest that a variety of variables, including impaired somatic hypermutation (SHM), B cell maturation, primary B cell dysfunctions, abnormalities in T cells, and antigen-presenting cells are implicated. Understanding the molecular mechanisms driving this disease's genome regulation requires a deep understanding of the gene expression. It is today possible to study both coding and non-coding sections of RNA using next-generation RNA-seq, which allows detecting differentially expressed genes in massive amounts of data, particularly in multifaceted illnesses like CVID. The aim of this study was to identify the differentially expressed genes between unstimulated (ex vivo) and stimulated (in vitro) naïve B cells of CVID patients and healthy donors (HD), and also to identify the underlying biological processes by gene enrichment analysis. The results of this study showed that both in CVID and HD, the stimulated and unstimulated cells were well separated. In the gene set analysis, it was discovered that significantly enriched CVID pathways were mostly involved in immune system-related processes such as adaptive immune response, cytoplasmic translation, granulocyte activation, lymphocyte activation, and lymphocyte differentiation. Therefore, the transcriptomic analysis of this study concluded that the majority of the genes that regulate the immune cell activation process function may have a greater impact on CVID patients than on HD which helps to understand the immunological defects in CVID patients.