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Pathological Change of Chronic Hepatitis B Patients with Different Tongue Coatings by Circular Multi-Omics Integrated Analysis

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Abstract

Objective

To compare the circular pathological changes of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients according to the tongue diagnosis.

Methods

Totally 41 CHB patients with typical white tongue coating (WTC) or yellow tongue coating (YTC) were enrolled and 14 healthy volunteers with normal tongue manifestation served as controls. The mRNA expression of peripheral leukocytes was detected by GeneChips, and 9 genes were randomly selected for expression validation. Circular metabolites were detected by gas chromatographymass spectrometry. Biological information was analyzed based on ingenuity pathways analysis or metabolomics database and the integrated networks were constructed by ClueGO.

Results

A total of 945 and 716 differentially expressed genes were found in patients with WTC and YTC relative to healthy volunteers respectively. The biological information analysis indicated that CHB patients had obviously increased functions in cell death, apoptosis and necrosis (Z-score ⩾2, P<0.05) and decreased activation in T lymphocytes (Z-score ⩽−2, P<0.05), regardless of the tongue manifestation. Compared to patients with WTC, the YTC patients were predicted to be more active in functions related to virus replication (Z-score ⩾2, P<0.05), and the content of circular fatty acids, such as oleic acid (P=0.098) and lauric acid (P=0.035), and citric acid cycle-related metabolites were higher in the YTC patients (P<0.1). The integrated analysis based on differential genes and metabolites indicated that the most difference in the biological function network between the WTC and YTC patients was tumor necrosis factor receptor associated factor 6 mediated-nuclear factor kappa-B activation process.

Conclusions

CHB patients with YTC had more severe inflammation and fatty acids metabolism aberrant than patients with WTC. The results facilitate the modern pathological annotation of Chinese medicine tongue diagnosis theory and provide a reference for the interpretation of pharmacological mechanisms of Chinese medicine treatment.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the doctors from the Shuguang Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Xixi Hospital of Hangzhou, the Nanjing Second Hospital and the Huai’an Fourth People’s Hospital for the support with clinical information and samples collection.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Sample collection: Guo JC, Xu L, Shen XP and Mao YF; formal analysis: Tang YS, Mao YF and Zhang XN; original draft preparation: Tang XS; review and editing: Zhao Y; project administration: Guo JC and Zhao Y; funding acquisition: Zhao Y and Hu YY.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yu Zhao.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interests.

Supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project of China (No. 2017ZX09304002), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81830119, 81403298)

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Tang, Ys., Guo, Jc., Xu, L. et al. Pathological Change of Chronic Hepatitis B Patients with Different Tongue Coatings by Circular Multi-Omics Integrated Analysis. Chin. J. Integr. Med. 28, 28–35 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11655-020-3275-4

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