Meta-analysis reveals up-regulation of cholesterol processes in non-alcoholic and down-regulation in alcoholic fatty liver disease

AIM: To compare transcriptomes of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and alcoholic liver disease (ALD) in a meta-analysis of liver biopsies. METHODS: Employing transcriptome data from patient liver biopsies retrieved from several public repositories we performed a meta-analysis comparing ALD and NAFLD. RESULTS: We observed predominating commonalities at the transcriptome level between ALD and NAFLD, most prominently numerous down-regulated metabolic pathways and cytochrome-related pathways and a few up-regulated pathways which include ECM-receptor interaction, phagosome and lysosome. However some pathways were regulated in opposite directions in ALD and NAFLD, for example, glycolysis was down-regulated in ALD and up-regulated in NAFLD. Interestingly, we found rate-limiting genes such as HMGCR, SQLE and CYP7A1 which are associated with cholesterol processes adversely regulated between ALD (down-regulated) and NAFLD (up-regulated). We propose that similar phenotypes in both diseases may be due to a lower level of the enzyme CYP7A1 compared to the cholesterol synthesis enzymes HMGCR and SQLE. Additionally, we provide a compendium of comparative KEGG pathways regulation in ALD and NAFLD. CONCLUSION: Our finding of adversely regulated cholesterol processes in ALD and NAFLD draws the focus to regulation of cholesterol secretion into bile. Thus, it will be interesting to further investigate CYP7A1-mediated cholesterol secretion into bile - also as possible drug targets. The list of potential novel biomarkers may assist differential diagnosis of ALD and NAFLD.