Identification of Ferroptosis-Related Genes in Acute Ischemic Stroke Based on Bioinformatics Analysis and Prediction of Potential Therapeutic Drugs

Ferroptosis is a regulated cell death implicated in various diseases, including stroke. We have explored the ferroptosis related key genes and the underlying association with acute ischemic stroke. Differentially expressed mRNAs and miRNAs in ischemic stroke were screened based on the GSE16561 and GSE95204 datasets, respectively. Ferroptosis-related genes were downloaded from the FerrDb and GeneCards databases. Eleven ferroptosis-related differentially expressed genes were identified. Based on weighted gene co-expression network analysis, three key modules were identified as being closely associated with stroke. Furthermore, two hub genes, lysosomal associated membrane protein 2 and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3, were selected by a support vector machine-based recursive feature elimination algorithm based on machine learning and showed excellent diagnostic accuracy in stroke, with an area under the curve value of 0.939 and 0.875 in the GSE16561 cohort, respectively. Furthermore, the Comparative Toxicogenomic Database predicted 24 potential therapeutic drugs targeting the two hub genes. To sum up, the identification of hub genes associated with ferroptosis and acute ischemic stroke based on bioinformatics analysis may contribute to the exploration of promising diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers and provide clues for the prediction of therapeutic candidates.