Objective To find potential biomarkers of myocardial infarction from the perspective of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs).

Methods The sequencing dataset GSE59867 of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with myocardial infarction was downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Weighted gene co-expression network (WGCNA) and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were used to investigate the biological changes during process of myocardial infarction and to find common genes. Common transcription factors for these genes were predicted. Finally, hub genes were identified by LASSO regression analysis. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate the clinical value of hub genes. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was used to explore the biological changes related to hub genes, and the expression of hub genes was verified based on myocardial infarction dataset GSE123342.

Results Myocardial infarction was accompanied by an immune inflammatory response. Six novel hub genes were identified (CD163, RNASE2, HP, FAM20A, MCEMP1, and FAM198B). ROC analysis showed that the expression of these hub genes had good diagnostic for myocardial infarction. The expression of these genes also decreased significantly during recovery from infarction during recovering from myocardial infarction. GSEA results suggested that most of these hub genes were related to glucose and lipid metabolism, reactive oxygen species, immune inflammation and so on.

Conclusion Based on the analysis of PBMCs, this study find that CD163, RNASE2, HP, FAM20A, MCEMP1 and FAM198B genes are associated with myocardial infarction, which may provide new insights for the early diagnosis of myocardial infarction and the monitoring, evaluation and management of infarction recovery.