Gene expression profiling of peripherial blood in patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm and carotid stenosis

Despite medical and surgical advances, atherosclerotic and aneurysmatic diseases remain the leading cause of death in the Western world. Presently, the factors responsible for the onset and the development of the atherosclerotic plaque and the aneurysmatic lesions are still unknown and only in some cases they are related to the so called risk factors (hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemya, smoke, obesity, stress, inactivity, age, gender). Since the incomplete understanding of the etiopathogenesis of these pathologies, remains difficult to assess the optimal treatment according to the disease state. In order to reduce the percentages of death and disability caused by rupture of the atherosclerotic or aneurysmatic lesions, would be useful the identification of susceptibility genes and the correlation between imaging data related to pathological factors (such as plaque echolucency, and molecular data) in order to assess a presymptomatic diagnosis and more specific treatments. So, the aim of this work was to characterize patients gene profiles in order to understand the genetic factors involved in the pathologies and to identify new potential biomarkers and therapeutic target. We studied the expression levels of some genes related to lipid metabolism and inflammation. Our final goal was to try to develop a Clinical Decision Support system to support the decision process about the therapeutic strategy (surgical, pharmacological) by means of statistical models of the pathology based on the analysis of the heterogeneous data sources: molecular analysis, clinical analysis, clinical imaging, patient anamnes.