Negative pressure wound therapy in the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers may be mediated through differential gene expression

Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) has been successfully used as a treatment for diabetic foot ulceration (DFU). Its mechanism of action on the molecular level, however, is not fully understood. We assessed the effect of NPWT on gene expression in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and DFU.

We included two cohorts of patients—individuals treated with either NPWT or standard therapy. The assignment to NWPT was non-randomized and based on wound characteristics. Differential gene expression profiling was performed using Illumina gene expression arrays and R Bioconductor pipelines based on the ‘limma’ package.

The final cohort encompassed 21 patients treated with NPWT and 8 with standard therapy. The groups were similar in terms of age (69.0 versus 67.5 years) and duration of T2DM (14.5 versus 14.4 years). We identified four genes differentially expressed between the two study arms post-treatment, but not pre-treatment: GFRA2 (GDNF family receptor alpha-2), C1QBP (complement C1q binding protein), RAB35 (member of RAS oncogene family) and SYNJ1 (synaptic inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate 5-phosphatase 1). Interestingly, all four genes seemed to be functionally involved in wound healing by influencing re-epithelialization and angiogenesis. Subsequently, we utilized co-expression analysis in publicly available RNA-seq data to reveal the molecular functions of GFRA2 and C1QBP, which appeared to be through direct protein–protein interactions.

We found initial evidence that the NPWT effect on DFUs may be mediated through differential gene expression. A discovery of the specific molecular mechanisms of NPWT is potentially valuable for its clinical application and development of new therapies.