Englert JA, et al. - Given that patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) are at a higher risk for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), researchers investigated whether HSCT patients with ARDS vs those that did not undergo HSCT would have a unique transcriptomic profile identifiable in peripheral blood. They performed RNA sequencing on 11 patients with ARDS (5 that had undergone HSCT and 6 that had not) and 12 patients with sepsis without ARDS (5 that that had undergone HCST and 7 that had not). A total of 687 genes were identified, differentially expressed between ARDS and ARDS-HSCT, including IFI44L, OAS3, LY6E, and SPATS2L that had increased expression in ARDS vs ARDS-HSCT; no differential expression of these genes was evident in sepsis vs sepsis-HSCT. Overall, patients with non-HSCT ARDS vs ARDS-HSCT had significantly different whole blood transcriptomic profiles. Underlying ARDS and ARDS-HSCT, different immune responses were suggested to be the contributors to lung injury.