Papers of the Week

Neuropathic pain (NP) affects approximately 6.9-10% of the world’s population and necessitates the development of novel treatments. Mitochondria are essential in the regulation of cell death. Neuroimmune mechanisms are implicated in various forms of cell death associated with NP. However, the specific involvement of mitochondrial dysfunction and disulfidptosis in NP remains uncertain. Further research is required to gain a better understanding of their combined contribution. Our comprehensive study employs a variety of bioinformatic analysis methods, including differential gene analysis, weighted gene co-expression network analysis, machine learning, functional enrichment analysis, immune infiltration, sub-cluster analysis, single-cell dimensionality reduction and cell-cell communication to gain insight into the molecular mechanisms behind these processes. Our study rationally defines a list of key gene sets for mitochondrial dysfunction and disulfidptosis. 6 hub mitochondrial genes and 3 disulfidptosis-related genes (DRGs) were found to be associated with NP. The key genes were predominantly expressed in neurons and were lowly expressed in the NP group compared to SHAM. In addition, our macrophages used the APP (Amyloid precursor protein)-CD74 (MHC class II invariant chain) pathway to interact with neurons. These results suggest that NP is interconnected with the mechanistic processes of mitochondrial dysfunction and disulfidptosis, which may contribute to clinically targeted therapies.