Integrated Analysis of Single-Cell RNA Sequencing and Bulk Transcriptome Data Identifies a Pyroptosis-Associated Diagnostic Model for Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by an insidious onset. Despite the emphasis on motor symptom-based diagnosis, there remains an unmet clinical need for effective diagnostic approaches during the prodromal phase of PD. Recent advances in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and bulk transcriptomic analyses of PD patients open avenues for identifying potential diagnostic biomarkers. A comprehensive cell trajectory analysis was conducted using scRNA-seq datasets to identify gene expressions associated with the cellular transition from healthy to PD-associated states. Integration of scRNA-seq datasets with weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) allowed extraction of pyroptosis-associated differentially expressed genes (PDEGs). Using LASSO logistic regression, support vector machine recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) and random forest methods, we developed a diagnostic model centred on PDEGs. In addition, immunoinfiltration, inflammatory signalling pathways and intercellular communication were detected by scRNA-seq analyses. In PD patients, the number of cells including metencephalic-like cells, excitatory neurons, inhibitory neurons and MHB-like cells was significantly reduced, whereas the proportion of astrocytes and microglia, immunoinfiltration and inflammatory signalling pathways were upregulated compared to healthy individuals. Using scRNA-seq and WGCNA analyses, two pyroptosis-related diagnostic genes, POLR2K and TIMM8B, were identified and a diagnostic model based on them was constructed, which showed promising performance upon validation. This study established a pyroptosis-related diagnostic model for PD through the analyses of scRNA-seq combined with bulk transcriptome data, which improved the understanding of the role of PDEGs in PD and provided new insights into the diagnostic strategies for this neurodegenerative disease.