Expression profile and diagnostic value of circRNAs in peripheral blood from patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have gained attention due to their performance in disease diagnosis. However, the characteristics of circRNAs in peripheral blood from patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) remain unknown. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to determine the expression profile and diagnostic potential of circRNAs in peripheral blood from patients with SLE. The global circRNA expression in the peripheral blood of patients with SLE and healthy controls (HCs) was detected using a circRNA microarray. Then, the expression levels of three upregulated circRNAs were selected for further validation by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) in a training set. Moreover, the diagnostic value of these circRNAs was assessed by constructing a receiver operating characteristic curve, and then verified in a blind testing set. In total, 1,566 circRNAs were identified to be dysregulated between patients with SLE and HCs (≥2 fold change, P<0.05). Furthermore, the RT-qPCR results were consistent with the microarray data, in that all three selected circRNAs, hsa_circ_0082688, hsa_circ_0082689 and hsa_circ_0008675, were significantly upregulated in patients with SLE (P<0.05). Results from the training set demonstrated that the combination of hsa_circ_0082688-hsa_circ_0082689 may provide the most beneficial diagnostic potential. Moreover, the blind test results indicated that the combination model of hsa_circ_0082688-hsa_circ_0082689 could effectively discriminate between patients with SLE from patients with rheumatoid arthritis and HCs, with a sensitivity of 91.30%, a specificity of 78.57% and an accuracy of 82.28%. Moreover, the combination model of hsa_circ_0082688-hsa_circ_0082689 + anti-dsDNA could more effectively discriminated the SLE group from the control groups, with a sensitivity of 95.65%, a specificity of 100.00% and an accuracy of 98.73%. In addition, correlation analysis results suggested that all three circRNAs in patients with SLE did not correlate with the SLE disease activity index. In conclusion, the expression levels of hsa_circ_0082688-hsa_circ_0082689 may serve as potential biomarkers for SLE diagnosis.