ABSTRACT
Objective:To investigate the expression levels of microRNA-124 (miR-124) and microRNA-494(miR-494) in the serum of elderly patients with Parkinson disease (PD) and its clinical significance.Methods:Ninety PD patients (PD group) who were hospitalized in Zhengzhou Central Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University from March 2018 to April 2020 were selected.At the same time, 100 non-PD elderly people examined in the physical examination center of the same hospital who matched with age and gender of PD patients were selected as the control group.After 12 hours of fasting, 4 ml of venous blood was taken from all subjects.All PD patients were graded by unified Parkinson disease rating scale(UPDRS) from the aspects of mental state, behavior and emotion, quality of life and motor examination, and graded by the Hoehn-Yahr rating scale for Parkinson disease.The expression levels of miR-124 and miR-494 in serum were detected by real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR), and the diagnostic values of miR-124 and miR-494 in PD patients were evaluated by ROC curve.Results:Hoehn-Yahr grade of PD patients with UPDRS≤60 points was significantly lower than that of patients with UPDRS >60 points((2.47±0.43) vs (3.42±0.47))( t=9.055, P<0.001), and there was no significant difference in serum miR-124 and miR-494 expression levels((0.72±0.14) vs (0.70±0.12), (1.17±0.19) vs (1.18±0.22)) ( t=0.633, 0.230, P=0.529, 0.819). Compared with that in control group, the expression of miR-124 in PD group was down-regulated ((0.71±0.20) vs (1.05±0.24)), and the expression of miR-494 was up-regulated((1.18±0.26) vs (0.96±0.22)) ( t=10.542, 6.315, P<0.001). The results of ROC showed that the area under curve (AUC) of serum miR-124 and miR-494 in the diagnosis of PD were 0.847 and 0.760 respectively, the cutoff values were 0.901 and 1.126, respectively, the sensitivities were 86.67% and 61.11% respectively, and the specificities were 75.03% and 79.00% respectively. The AUC of the combined diagnosis of PD was 0.898, and the sensitivity and specificity were 85.56% and 85.00% respectively. Conclusions:The expression of miR-124 is low in PD patients, while the expression of miR-494 is high, which suggests that the changes of the two miRNA levels may be related with the occurrence and development of PD.Both of them have a certain diagnostic value for PD, and the value of combined diagnosis is higher.