Preliminary study on altered levels of serum miR-422a in patients with traumatic brain injury / 临床检验杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To detect the altered levels of miR-422a in serum of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients and explore its clinical value as diagnostic and prognostic indicator for TBI. @*Methods@#Serum miR-422a levels were determined by TaqMan quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) in 75 mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) patients, 75 severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) patients and 75 healthy controls. The differences of serum miR-422a levels were compared between the TBI patients with and without lesions on head CT. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses were used to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of miR-422a for mTBI and sTBI patients. Spearman correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between the levels of miR-422a and the severity and prognosis of TBI patients. @*Results@#Compared with healthy controls [(31.1×10 -5 (18×10 -5 , 51.5×10 -5 )］, the serum miR-422a level was significantly increased in both the patients of mTBI 81.6×10 -5 (51.2×10 -5 , 131.1×10 -5 ) (Z=-6.647, P＜0.001)］and sTBI [132.5×10 -5 (51.5×10 -5 , 240.5×10 -5 ) (Z=-7.345, P＜0.001)］. The serum miR-422a level of sTBI patients was significantly higher than that of mTBI patients (Z=-2.573, P=0.01). The area under ROC curve (AUC ROC ) of miR-422a for distinguishing healthy controls from TBI patients was 0.831 (95%CI 0.776 to 0.886, P＜0.001). The AUC ROC of miR-422a for distinguishing healthy controls from mTBI patients was 0.814 (95%CI 0.744 to 0.885, P＜0.001). The AUC ROC of miR-422a for distinguishing healthy controls from sTBI patients was 0.847 (95%CI 0.785 to 0.910, P＜0.001). miR-422a level of the TBI patients with lesions on head CT were significantly increased compared with that without lesions on head CT (P=0.025). In addition, the level of miR-422a in TBI patients with unfavorable outcome was significantly higher than that in TBI patients with favorable outcome (P=0.031). Spearman correlations analysis showed that the level of the miR-422a was significantly negatively correlated with GCS score (Glasgow coma scale) (r=-0.231, P=0.004) and GOS score (Glasgow outcome scale) (r=-0.208, P=0.011). @*Conclusion@#The level of serum miR-422a in TBI patients was significantly increased and related to the condition and prognosis of TBI patients. Serum miR-422a may be a potential biomarker for the assessment of diagnosis and prognosis of TBI patients.