Bioinformatics analysis revealed aging-related diagnostic genes and therapeutic targets in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is increasingly recognized as an aging-related disease. The objective of this study was to identify the aging-related genes and microRNAs (miRNAs) in PAH to explore potential diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for PAH. Microarray data for GSE113439 and GSE53408 were downloaded from the the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) as experimental and validation sets, respectively. Overlapped with the Aging Atlas database, a total of 21 differentially expressed aging-related genes (DEARGs) were identified. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis were performed on DEARGs using R software. Construct and visualize protein-protein interactions (PPI) and obtain hub genes using Cytoscape software. GSE53408 dataset verified the expression level and diagnostic value of hub genes, identified the final diagnostic genes TOP1, TOP2A, HSP90AA1 and HIF1A. By constructing the miRNA-mRNA network, it was found that miRNA-186-5P was the common target miRNA of the four genes. TOP1, TOP2A, HSP90AA1 and HIF1A, as well as their common target miRNA-186-5p, may play a role in the pathologic process of PAH and may become new potential targets for the diagnosis and treatment of aging-related PAH.