Identification and mechanism of key genes in inflammatory response of chronic otitis media in rats.

Chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) affects 330 million people globally; however, biomarkers for its inflammatory response (IR) remain underinvestigated. This study aimed to identify key genes in IR and explore the mechanisms of CSOM. Following the CSOM model construction, RNA sequencing was performed on rat samples and IR-related genes were extracted from public databases. The key genes were identified using the support vector machine recursive feature elimination and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator algorithms, and the diagnostic performance was assessed using receiver operating characteristic curves. Nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NDK) protein expression was specifically validated via immunohistochemical analysis. A nomogram was created to predict the incidence of CSOM, and functional enrichment, drug prediction, and molecular docking analyses were conducted. The results indicated that three key genes (Has2, Clec5a, and Il6) were markedly upregulated in CSOM, validated by immunohistochemical staining and quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis. These findings provide insights into potential CSOM therapies.