Clinical characteristics of thyroid eye disease and expression profile of peripheral blood immune cells

This study included patients with thyroid eye disease (n = 81) and Graves' disease (n = 165) for a cross-sectional study. Then, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were collected from patients with thyroid eye disease (n = 5), Graves' disease (n = 15), and normal individuals (n = 5) for RNA-seq. WGCNA analysis was conducted on the RNA-seq results to identify genes related to thyroid eye disease, and these genes were verified by RT-qPCR. The results suggest that: (1) Neutrophil counts were elevated in the TED group compared to the GD group. (2) Ten hub genes, MMP9, BPI, CD177, MPO, CEACAM8, CEACAM1, SLPI, AZU1, KCNJ15 and TNFRSF10C, were identified. The above hub genes were positively correlated with neutrophils.