Analysis of shared pathogenic mechanisms and drug targets in myocardial infarction and gastric cancer based on transcriptomics and machine learning.

Background: Recent studies have suggested a potential association between gastric cancer (GC) and myocardial infarction (MI), with shared pathogenic factors. This study aimed to identify these common factors and potential pharmacologic targets.

Methods: Data from the IEU Open GWAS project were used. Two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was used to explore the causal link between MI and GC. Transcriptome analysis identified common differentially expressed genes, followed by enrichment analysis. Drug target MR analysis and eQTLs validated these associations with GC, and the Steiger direction test confirmed their direction. The random forest and Lasso algorithms were used to identify genes with diagnostic value, leading to nomogram construction. The performance of the model was evaluated via ROC, calibration, and decision curves. Correlations between diagnostic genes and immune cell infiltration were analyzed.

Results: MI was linked to increased GC risk (=1.112, =0.04). Seventy-four genes, which are related mainly to ubiquitin-dependent proteasome pathways, were commonly differentially expressed between MI and GC. Nine genes were consistently associated with GC, and eight had diagnostic value. The nomogram built on these eight genes had strong predictive performance (=0.950, validation set =0.957). Immune cell infiltration analysis revealed significant correlations between several genes and immune cells, such as T cells, macrophages, neutrophils, B cells, and dendritic cells.

Conclusion: MI is associated with an increased risk of developing GC, and both share common pathogenic factors. The nomogram constructed based on 8 genes with diagnostic value had good predictive performance.