A preliminary analysis of plasma microRNA expression profile in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis / 中华检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To evaluate the expression and clinical significance of miRNA in plasma of patients with primary biliary cirrhosis.Methods Plasma from 19 PBC patients,10 healthy volunteers and 10 viral hepatitis patients were selected from Shanghai Songjiang Hospital from december 2010 to January 2013.Among them 3 PBC patients' plasma and 3 healthy volunteers' plasma were detected by miRNA microarray for miRNA expression profile examination.Real-time PCR was used to verify the results of microarray,miRNA target gene predictior software was used to predict the target genes of differentially expressed miRNA.ROC was used to determine the clinical value of plasma miRNA.Results According to microarray,a total of 16 miRNAs were found to be differentially expressed.As revealed by qRT-PCR,the expression of miRNA-92a-3p and miRNA-4516 decreased while the expression of miRNA-572 and miRNA-575 were up-regulated in PBC group compared with healthy controls (P ＜ 0.05).In comparison with nonPBC cirrhosis group,only miRNA-92a-3p and miRNA-4516 were down-regulated (P ＜ 0.05).The area under the curve (AUC)of miRNA-92a-3p for the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of PBC were 0.92 and 0.84,respectively.while for The area under the ROC curve of miRNA-4516,the AUC for diagnosis and differential diagnosis PBC were 0.89 and 0.76,respectively.The optimal cut-off values for identifying PBC from healthy controls were defined as 1.26 ng/μl.for miRNA-92a-3p (sensitivity,92％ ;specificity,80％)and 1.16ng/ul for miRNA-4516 (sensitivity,85％ ;specificity,70％)respectively.The optimal cut-off values for identifying PBC from viral hepatitis were defined as 1.08 ng/μl.for miRNA-92a-3p (sensitivity,89％ ; specificity,81％)and 1.06 ng/μl for miRNA-4516 (sensitivity,77％ ;specificity,68％).Conclusion The results indicate that plasma from patients with PBC has a unique miRNA exprssion profile and these differentially expressed miRNA can be used as clinical biomarkers of PBC.