Peripheral blood transcriptome analysis of patients with ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome through high-throughput sequencing.

Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) is a frequent iatrogenic complication that arises during assisted reproduction and accounts for approximately 30% of all in vitro fertilization cycles. Using high-throughput sequencing, we investigated the peripheral blood transcriptome of patients with OHSS.

Methods: Peripheral blood samples were obtained from 15 patients in each of the OHSS high-risk and low-risk groups on the ovum pick-up day. Subsequently, high-throughput sequencing was used to obtain the peripheral blood transcriptomes of five patients each from the high- and low-risk groups. Bioinformatic tools were used for mRNA expression profile mapping and screening of differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Bioinformatics techniques were also implemented in the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes Genomes (KEGG) signal pathway, Gene Ontology (GO) function, and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analyses of DEGs.

Results: A total of 20,031 genes were identified and 148 were found to be differentially expressed (P <0.05, |log₂FC| > 0.58), with 52 upregulated and 96 downregulated genes. GO and KEGG analyses indicated that these genes were involved in extracellular corpuscles (GO: 0070062), plasma membrane (GO: 0005886), extracellular regions (GO: 0005576), immune system response (GO: 0006955), PI3K-Akt signaling pathways (hsa04151), cell adhesion molecules (CAMs, hsa04514), focal adhesion (hsa04510), and complement and coagulation cascades (hsa04610). The PPI network and realtime fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) verification predicted that complement C3, von Willebrand factor, and vascular cell adhesion protein 1 proteins are highly implicated in OHSS and may serve as potential biomarkers for future OHSS studies.

Conclusion: Transcriptome analysis revealed several DEGs related to OHSS risk factors in the peripheral blood, indicating that these DEGs may be novel players in OHSS development.