Construction of a neural network diagnostic model and investigation of immune infiltration characteristics for Crohn’s disease

Objective: Crohn’s disease (CD), a chronic recurrent illness, is a type of inflammatory bowel disease whose incidence and prevalence rates are gradually increasing. However, there is no universally accepted criterion for CD diagnosis. The aim of this study was to create a diagnostic prediction model for CD and identify immune cell infiltration features in CD. Methods: In this study, gene expression microarray datasets were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Then, we identified differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between 178 CD and 38 control cases. Enrichment analysis of DEGs was also performed to explore the biological role of DEGs. Moreover, the “randomForest” package was applied to select core genes that were used to create a neural network model. Finally, in the training cohort, we used CIBERSORT to evaluate the immune landscape between the CD and normal groups. Results: The results of enrichment analysis revealed that these DEGs may be involved in biological processes associated with immunity and inflammatory responses. Moreover, the top 3 hub genes in the protein-protein interaction network were IL-1β, CCL2, and CXCR2. The diagnostic model allowed significant discrimination with an area under the ROC curve of 0.984 [95% confidence interval: 0.971–0.993]. A validation cohort (GSE36807) was utilized to ensure the reliability and applicability of the model. In addition, the immune infiltration analysis indicated nine different immune cell types were significantly different between the CD and healthy control groups. Conclusion: In summary, this study offers a novel insight into the diagnosis of CD and provides potential biomarkers for the precise treatment of CD.