Gene Expression Profiles in Peripheral Lymphocytes by Arsenic Exposure and Skin Lesion Status in a Bangladeshi Population

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Abstract
Millions of individuals worldwide are chronically exposed to arsenic through their drinking water. In this study, the effect of arsenic exposure and arsenical skin lesion status on genome-wide gene expression patterns was evaluated using RNA from peripheral blood lymphocytes of individuals selected from the Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study. Affymetrix HG-U133A GeneChip (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA) arrays were used to measure the expression of ∼22,000 transcripts. Our primary statistical analysis involved identifying differentially expressed genes between participants with and without arsenical skin lesions based on the significance analysis of microarrays statistic with an a priori defined 1% false discovery rate to minimize false positives. To better characterize differential expression, we also conducted Gene Ontology and pathway comparisons in addition to the gene-specific analyses. Four-hundred sixty-eight genes were differentially expressed between these two groups, from which 312 differentially expressed genes were identified by restricting the analysis to female never-smokers. We also explored possible differential gene expression by arsenic exposure levels among individuals without manifest arsenical skin lesions; however, no differentially expressed genes could be identified from this comparison. Our findings show that microarray-based gene expression analysis is a powerful method to characterize the molecular profile of arsenic exposure and arsenic-induced diseases. Genes identified from this analysis may provide insights into the underlying processes of arsenic-induced disease and represent potential targets for chemoprevention studies to reduce arsenic-induced skin cancer in this population. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(7):1367–75)

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