Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40319430›Full record

ArticlePain and therapy2025

Predicting the Risk of Lumbar Prolapsed Disc: A Gene Signature-Based Machine Learning Analysis.

Fengfeng Wang, Fei Meng, Stanley Sau Ching Wong

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Pain and therapy, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Fengfeng WangDepartment of Anaesthesiology, School of Clinical Medicine, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Room 424, Block K102 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
Fei MengDepartment of Anaesthesiology, School of Clinical Medicine, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Room 424, Block K102 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
Stanley Sau Ching WongDepartment of Anaesthesiology, School of Clinical Medicine, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Room 424, Block K102 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China. wongstan@hku.hk.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8763-5687

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

introductionLumbar prolapsed disc (LPD) is a leading cause of low back pain, contributing significantly to global disability and healthcare burden. This study aimed to develop machine learning models to predict the risk of LPD by analysing gene expression profiles for early detection.

methodsTranscriptomic data from peripheral blood samples were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, with dataset GSE150408 used for training and GSE124272 for testing. The training dataset included 17 patients with sciatica resulting from LPD, all of whom had magnetic resonance imaging confirmation of single-level LPD at either the L4/5 or L5/S1 levels. Data from 17 healthy volunteers were used as controls. Recursive feature elimination (RFE) was employed to identify the most relevant gene signatures among 23 pain-related genes. Machine learning models, including support vector machine (SVM), random forest, k-nearest neighbours (KNN), logistic regression, and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), were trained and evaluated. Model performance was assessed using accuracy, area under the curve (AUC), F1 score, and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC).

resultsEight key gene signatures were identified as significant predictors of LPD, with MMP9 exhibiting the highest importance score. Most of these genes were differentially expressed between patients with LPD and healthy controls (p < 0.05). Among the models, random forest demonstrated the highest accuracy (0.80, 95% CI 0.73-0.85) and MCC (0.64, 95% CI 0.53-0.76), followed by KNN, XGBoost, and SVM. Overall, the random forest model exhibited the most robust performance in predicting the risk of LPD.

conclusionThe results of our study suggest that machine learning models based on pain-related gene signatures may identify patients at high risk of developing LPD with reasonably high accuracy. These prediction models could perhaps be integrated into clinical diagnostic tools to enhance early diagnosis and prevention.

Indexed as

Early preventionGene signatureLow back painLumbar prolapsed discMachine learningRisk predictionTranscriptomics

Identifiers

PMID40319430
PMCPMC12085505

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