Ricerc@Sapienza

Topical steroids are effective in Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE), but
patients often show different tendencies to relapse. We assessed whether
gene expression is associated with a sort of "steroid dependency" in EoE
children.
Methods
Biopsy samples were prospectively collected on EoE children responding to
topical steroids. Patients treated with viscous budesonide for 24 weeks
were subsequently classified as early (6 months) or late (>6 months)
relapsing. RNA was isolated from esophageal biopsies at the time of the
relapse and analyzed by NGS for transcriptome profiling.
Results
Of 40 patients, 22 patients were considered for mRNA expression profile.
Thirteen were included in the early-relapse group, and 9 were in the
late-relapse. No significant difference was observed in the two groups
for clinical, endoscopic or histological features. Using the mRNA
expression profile we performed supervised clustering using the 10 top
differentially expressed genes between early and late relapsing patients.
The heatmap and PCA show a proper segregation among patients. SERPINB12
is the only gene attaining a significant differential expression between
the two groups (FDR < 0.05).
Conclusions
Different tendencies to relapse in EoE children responding to topical
steroids might be related to altered mRNA expressions. SERPINB12
presented a significantly higher expression