Analysis of plasma microRNA expression profiles and bioinformatics in osteoarthritis patients / 中华风湿病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the characteristics of plasma microRNA (miRNA) profiles and bioinformatics in patients with osteoarthritis(OA) in order to search for diseases related biomarkers.Methods:Blood samples from 20 cases of OA patients and 15 cases of normal control (NC) were collected to extracted total RNA in plasma. The plasma miRNA expression profile was tested by using Agilent Human miRNA array. Target gene analysis and clustering analysis were performed on differentially expressed microRNAs. Three differentially expressed miRNAs (miR-134-5p, miR-320c and miR-940) were detected by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) for further confirmation of microarray data. The differences were tested using t test analysis. Results:① MiRNA microarray showed that compared with NC, there were 74 differential expression genes in plasma of patients in the OA group (FC≥2, P≤0.01), among which 45 were up-regulated and 29 were down-regulated. ② A total of 2 731 potential target genes were predicted in three database, and involved in 462 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEEG) pathways. Target gene ontology (GO) functional clustering found that the main functions of miRNAs were intercellular adhesion, collagen synthesis, intracellular signal transduction, etc. The main KEGG pathways of miRNAs include mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) signaling pathway, osteoclast differentiation signaling pathway, etc. ③ The expression level of miR-20a-5p and miR-320c in OA group were significantly higher than that in controls ( t=-6.142, P<0.05; t=-3.854, P<0.05), while miR-940 was significantly lower than that of controls ( t=2.767, P<0.05) . The trend was consistent with the microarray data. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) curve analyses showed that they were useful biomarkers for differentiating patients with OA from controls. Conclusion:The study shows that plasma in OA patients has a specific miRNAs expression, and miRNAs play an important role in the pathogenesis of OA.