Key result
Prevalent atrial fibrillation was significantly associated with the up-regulation of seven genes in whole blood, most notably PBX1 (P = 2.8x10^-27), though no significant associations were found with incident atrial fibrillation.
Observational (n=2,446)
No
p-value: p=2.8e-27
Whole blood gene expression profiling identified seven genes, notably PBX1, that are significantly up-regulated in patients with prevalent atrial fibrillation, suggesting potential pathways involved in AF maintenance.
BACKGROUND: Atrial fibrillation (AF) involves substantial electrophysiological, structural and contractile remodeling. We hypothesize that characterizing gene expression might uncover important pathways related to AF. METHODS AND RESULTS: We performed genome-wide whole blood transcriptomic profiling (Affymetrix Human Exon 1.0 ST Array) of 2446 participants (mean age 66 ± 9 years, 55% women) from the Offspring cohort of Framingham Heart Study. The study included 177 participants with prevalent AF, 143 with incident AF during up to 7 years follow up, and 2126 participants with no AF. We identified seven genes statistically significantly up-regulated with prevalent AF. The most significant gene, PBX1 (P = 2.8 × 10(-7)), plays an important role in cardiovascular development. We integrated differential gene expression with gene-gene interaction information to identify several signaling pathways possibly involved in AF-related transcriptional regulation. We did not detect any statistically significant transcriptomic associations with incident AF. CONCLUSION: We examined associations of gene expression with AF in a large community-based cohort. Our study revealed several genes and signaling pathways that are potentially involved in AF-related transcriptional regulation.
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Lin et al. (2014) conducted an observational in Atrial Fibrillation (n=2,446). Atrial fibrillation vs. No atrial fibrillation was evaluated on Differential whole blood gene expression associated with prevalent atrial fibrillation (p=2.8e-27). Prevalent atrial fibrillation was significantly associated with the up-regulation of seven genes in whole blood, most notably PBX1 (P = 2.8x10^-27), though no significant associations were found with incident atrial fibrillation.
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