To search for genes related to nerve injury in heat stroke (HS) by bioinformatics, the possible molecular mechanism of nerve injury in HS was explored and preliminarily verified.

(1) Taking April 2022 as the time cut-off, the expression profile datas of nerve inject-related genes in thermal radiation disease were screened based on GEO and other databases, and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were obtained by retrieving datas set GSE64778, combined with GeneCards and CTD databases to retrieve HS related target genes, and the candidate target genes were obtained by intersection screening. The "ClusterProfiler" package in R language was used to perform GO and KEGG enrichment analysis for HS related target genes; STRING database was further used to construct the interaction network map of target genes and correlation analysis of key genes to obtain core genes. (2) Peripheral blood of patients with HS treated in Nantong First People's Hospital of Jiangsu Province from June 2022 to August 2022 were collected, and the expression of core genes were verified by PCR technology.

(1) SRA datas screening of the GSE64778 dataset yielded 1178 DEGs, of which 322 were up-regulated and 856 were down-regulated. 2914 genes were screened in the GeneCards database and 2377 genes were screened in the CTD database. The top 300 differentially expressed genes in the GSE64778 dataset were intersected with the search results of GeneCards and CTD databases, and 25 candidate DEGs were finally screened. (2) GO functional annotation results indicated that the target genes were mainly involved in apoptosis, stress response and negative regulation of cellular processes, and functioned in processes such as protein dimerization and protein binding. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis suggested that the candidate target genes were mainly enriched in PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. PPI network analysis suggested that Hsp90AA1 was the hub gene with the highest Degree value and enriched in PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. (3) qRT-PCR confirmed that the expression of Hsp90AA1 in the patients with nerve injury in the early stage of HS was consistent with the results of bioinformatics analysis.

Hsp90AA1 may be the main affecting gene of nerve injury in HS, which is related to apoptosis, stress response and negative regulation of cellular processes.