AIM  To identify immune-related genes involved in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) based on support vector machine-recursive feature elimination and to further investigate their value in the diagnosis of AMI.

  METHODS  GSE66360 dataset of AMI gene expressions was downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus. Differentially expressed immune-related genes involved in AMI based on SVM-RFE were screened and their value in the diagnosis of AMI was further investigated. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) was used to evaluate its diagnostic value for AMI.

  RESULTS  A total of 66 differentially expressed immune genes were obtained. Eight genes were finally identified based on SVM-RFE and they were used to construct a SVM classifier. The classifier had an excellent capacity of predicting AMI in both the discovery cohort (AUC=0.998) and the validation cohort (AUC=1.00). Pathways enrichment analysis revealed that the identified immune genes were mainly involved in the regulation of vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation and vascular arteriosclerosis.

  CONCLUSION  Our study has identified 8 immune genes and studied their potential roles in the diagnosis of AMI, which will improve our understanding of the molecular mechanism of the occurrence of AMI.