Background
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are known mediators of cellular damage in multiple diseases including diabetic complications. Despite its importance, no comprehensive database is currently available for the genes associated with ROS. Here we present ROS- and diabetes-related targets (genes/proteins) collected from the biomedical literature through a text mining technology.
Results
SciMiner, a web-based literature mining tool, analyzed 1,154 biomedical papers indexed with diabetes and ROS by PubMed and identified 1,026 targets. Fifty-three targets were significantly over-represented in the ROS-diabetes literature compared to randomly selected literature. These over-represented targets included well-known members of the oxidative stress response including catalase, the NADPH oxidase family, and the superoxide dismutase family of proteins. The expression levels of nine genes, selected from the top ranked ROS-diabetes set, were measured in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of diabetic and non-diabetic DBA/2J mice. Eight genes exhibited significant differential expression between diabetic and non-diabetic mice. For 6 genes, the direction of expression change in diabetes paralleled enhanced oxidative stress in the DRG.
Conclusions
In conclusion, literature mining compiled ROS-diabetes related targets from the biomedical literature and led us to evaluate biological relevance of selected targets in the pathogenesis of diabetic neuropathy.