Introduction
Takayasu Arteritis (TA) is a rare, non-specific vascular inflammation involving large arteries and their main branches. The disorder occurs worldwide, but is most prevalent in East Asia. In addition, the disease progresses rapidly after the onset and relapses/recurring cycles of inflammation affect patient physiology and psychology significantly. Few symptoms show in the early stage make this disease hardly to be discovered in time. Physical examination along with imaging and serological tests is used to assess the extent of inflammation and progression in TA(1).
The most commonly used drugs for treating TA are glucocorticoids(2), methotrexate(3), and mycophenolate mofetil(4, 5), however, relapses are frequent. In recent years, biological agents such as Tocilizumab (TCZ)(6) and Abatacept (ABA)(7) are being explored as alternative treatments for TA. Patients with poor response to standard medications and vascular blockage require surgical intervention involving endovascular management and open surgical repair (OSR)(8, 9). However, surgical intervention does not prevent long-term restenosis and new lesions due to disease recurrence(10-12). To further improve the treatment strategy and prognosis of TA patients, research on its pathogenesis has become the focus of TA-related research.
Recent studies have focus on the significant role of CD4+ T cell and IL-6 signaling pathway in development and progression of TA(13-15). Although several groups have studied gene mutations and protein expression in TA patients. However, the relationship between these two is rarely mentioned, which is due to the less data on the types and transcriptomes of peripheral blood cells.
Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) is a high-throughput technology based on intracellular transcriptome sequencing to explain the diseases at the cellular level(16, 17), which give us a chance to find new cell types and cell functions that have not been discovered before. This new technology is being widely used in human immune and cardiovascular diseases(18, 19). In this study, single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was used to dissect the transcriptomes of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in TA patients in order to better understand to this disease.