The immune dysregulation landscape and dynamic regulation of competing endogenous RNAs in spinal cord injury

BackgroundSpinal cord injury (SCI) triggers a complex secondary injury cascade that critically limits neural repair. Although microRNAs have been implicated in post-SCI inflammation and neural regeneration, the key competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network regulating immune dysregulation remains unclear.MethodsPeripheral blood miRNA data from six SCI patients and six healthy controls were combined with peripheral blood mRNA expression profiles from the GEO dataset (GSE151371) to identify differentially expressed miRNAs and mRNAs.

Characteristic miRNAs were screened using LASSO and SVM-RFE machine learning algorithms, with core miRNAs subsequently validated via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Their target mRNAs were predicted and validated, enabling the construction of a ceRNA regulatory network.

Concurrent immune infiltration analysis was performed. WGCNA was applied to the core mRNAs to define immune-related co-expression modules and conduct functional enrichment.

Furthermore, SCI samples were classified into two molecular subtypes with distinct immune microenvironments.