Comparative transcriptome analysis to identify common genes involved in the progression of Sjögren’s syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) are chronic, autoimmune diseases characterized by loss of mobility, pain, and inflammation around the major joints and dysfunctional exocrine glands, respectively. In the present study, the microarray gene expression data in the whole blood of RA (Accession No. GSE93272) and SS patients (Accession No. GSE84844) were used in the identification of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and pathways involved in RA and SS using computational approaches. DEGs associated with fold change (Log2FC±1.0) were found in 206 genes in RA and 138 genes in SS. Between both the datasets, 46 genes were expressed commonly in both RA and SS. The Log2FC filtered DEGs were further used for comparative gene expression analysis, gene ontology, and pathway enrichment analysis. The investigations revealed crucial genes and pathways that are involved in both RA and SS pathophysiology and deeper analysis of these pathways gives an insight into the progression and involvement of both diseases.