STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN TLRS SIGNALLING PATHWAY-MEDIATED IRAK-M GENE AND SEPSIS

XIAO-DONG PAN, LU-MING TANG*, LIN-XIA WANG, LAI-FANG SUN, WAN-QUAN KONG

Department of Emergency, The Second Affiliated Hospital & Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325027, Zhejiang province, P,R. China

Objective: To explore the correlation between the interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase M (IRAK-M) gene mediated by the Toll-like receptor (TLR) signalling pathway and sepsis.

Methods: In this study, 68 patients with sepsis treated in our hospital from February 2014 to February 2015 were selected as the study objects (observation group), and 68 normal individuals were selected as the control group. The relationship between IRAK-M gene mediation by the TLR signalling pathway and sepsis was studied by fluorescence quantitative PCR, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), Western blotting and immunohistochemistry.

Results: The mRNA expression levels of TLRs and IRAK-M in blood of patients with sepsis were remarkably increased, with significant differences compared to the normal group (P<0.05). The protein expression levels of TLRs and IRAK-M in the blood of the observation group and control group were detected by ELISA and Western blotting. This study found that the expression of TLRs and the IRAK-M protein in the blood of patients from the observation group (0.96 μg/L, 7.3 μg/L) was significantly higher than in the control group (0.32 μg/L, 0.54 μg/L) and there was a significant difference between the two groups (P<0.05). The immunohistochemical results of the observation group and the control group showed that expression of the IRAK-M gene in the pathological site of the patients in the observation group was significantly increased; the number of positive cells (94.3%) was significantly higher than that in the control group (18.4%) (P<0.05).

Conclusion: The IRAK-M gene may be involved in the pathogenesis of sepsis in severely burned patients through the TLR signalling pathway.