real-time rt-pcr detection of hcn4 and adam8 genes in ventilator-associated pneumonia patients hospitalized in intensive care unit

Background: ventilator-associated pneumonia (vap) is one of the most serious and prevalent nosocomial infections among patients in the intensive care unit (icu), which is often recognized after detecting the symptoms. to date, there is no proper clinical and diagnostic marker for early detection of this disease. in this study, two genes (hcn4 and adam8) were assessed to be used as biomarkers for recognition of the disease in patients with vap. materials and methods: this study was a case control study, which was done in masih daneshvari hospital affiliated to shahid beheshti university of medical sciences, tehran, iran, since 2015-2016. current study consisted of 30 patients with vap and 30 healthy people. after extraction of rna, cdna synthesis was done. expression of genes was assessed by real time pcr.results: in peripheral blood samples of the patients, 10 out of 30 did not have positive hcn4 gene expression. among the healthy individuals, 6 out of 30 cases did not have positive hcn4 gene expression. moreover, in adam8 marker patients, 13 out of 30 did not have positive adam8 gene expression and 8 out of 30 healthy individuals did not have positive adam8 gene expression. conclusion: genes hcn4 and adam8 assessment with real time-pcr in this study can be used as promising markers in early detection of vap disease. more extensive studies on larger sample sizes may yield higher sensitivity for these molecular markers.