ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Computational Genomics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgene.2025.1602177
The identification of a blood circular RNA signature that differentiates Chikungunya virus infection
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China
- 2Liangzhu Laboratory, Zhejiang University Medical Center, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 311113, China, Hangzhou, China
- 3Collaborative Innovation Center of Jiangsu Province of Cancer Prevention and Treatment of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210023, China, Nanjing, China
- 4Jiangsu Province Engineering Research Center of TCM Intelligence Health Service, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210023, China, Nanjing, China
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Objective: Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a re-emerging mosquito-borne human pathogen, which poses critical threats to the public health. However, an effective diagnostic method for early CHIKV infection remains scarce. Circular RNAs (CircRNAs) are a novel class of RNAs with important biological functions. They have been shown to be promising biomarkers for many human diseases. In this study, we sought to identify circRNA biomarkers in human peripheral whole blood for the early diagnosis of CHIKV infection.Design: Candidate circRNA biomarkers were identified by group comparison using a case-control study, which was further validated using an independent cohort. The performance of this signature and its correlation with clinical factors were estimated in both cohorts.Results: Using two public RNA-seq datasets of CHIKV infection, we developed and validated a 13-circRNA based blood signature that can discriminate CHIKV infectious patients from healthy controls. Furthermore, this blood circRNA signature was correlated with viral load in patients with CHIKV infection. Functional analysis implicated that these biomarker circRNAs were involved in the activation and regulation of immune processes against CHIKV infection.Collectively, our findings indicated that peripheral blood circRNAs were potential biomarkers for the early diagnosis of CHIKV infection.
Keywords: Chikungunya virus, circular RNA, peripheral whole blood, Diagnostic biomarker, Infectious Disease
Received: 29 Mar 2025; Accepted: 15 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bai, Yan, Wen, Yuan and Gu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wanjun Gu, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China
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