Identification of B cells participated in the mechanism of postmenopausal women osteoporosis using microarray analysis.

To further understand the molecular mechanism of lymphocytes B cells in postmenopausal women osteoporosis. Microarray data (GSE7429) were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus, in which B cells were separated from the whole blood of postmenopausal women, including 10 with high bone mineral density (BMD) and 10 with low BMD. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between high and low BMD women were identified by Student's t-test, and P < 0.01 was used as the significant criterion. Functional enrichment analysis was performed for up- and down-regulated DEGs using KEGG, REACTOME, and Gene Ontology (GO) databases. Protein-protein interaction network (PPI) of up- and down-regulated DEGs was respectively constructed by Cytoscape software using the STRING data. Total of 169 up-regulated and 69 down-regulated DEGs were identified. Functional enrichment analysis indicated that the genes (ITPA, ATIC, UMPS, HPRT1, COX10 and COX15) might participate in metabolic pathways, MAP3K10 and MAP3K9 might participate in the activation of JNKK activity, COX10 and COX15 might involve in mitochondrial electron transport, and ATIC, UMPS and HPRT1 might involve in transferase activity. MAPK3, ITPA, ATIC, UMPS and HPRT1 with a higher degree in PPI network were identified. MAPK3, MAP3K10, MAP3K9, COX10, COX15, ATIC, UMPS and HPRT1 might participate in the pathogenesis of osteoporosis.