Short communicationMicroRNA expression profiling in Guillain-Barré syndrome
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute autoimmune disease affecting the peripheral nervous system which is characterized by progressive limb weakness and numbness (Yuki and Hartung, 2012). Autoantibodies binding to peripheral nerves and inducing the complement deposition serves as the general mechanism of nerve damage in GBS. However, detailed mechanism and epigenetic features of GBS remains unknown.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of genome-encoded, small noncoding RNAs that can silence mRNAs that contain sequences complementary to the miRNAs' 7- to 8-bp ‘seed’ sequence (Cao et al., 2016). MiRNAs play critical roles in multiple biologic processes including cell proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis (Eulalio and Mano, 2015). Circulating miRNAs can be used as biomarkers in disease prevention and diagnosis (Eulalio and Mano, 2015). In our previous study, expression of miR-155 was significantly downregulated in GBS patients (Wang et al., 2013). It remains unknown whether there are other miRNAs changed in patients with GBS. In the present study, we applied microarray technology to examine miRNA expression profiles in blood samples from GBS patients and healthy controls to explore their possible roles in this disease.
Section snippets
Patients and sample collection
A total of 30 patients diagnosed with GBS from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University and 23 matched healthy controls participated in this study. The disability scores were evaluated as previously described (van der Meché et al., 1992). Our study received prior approval by the ethics committee of Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University and written consent was obtained from each donor. All of the patients with GBS were admitted within 2 weeks after onset. After the
miRNA expression profile in patients with GBS
Using Benjamini-Hochberg False Discovery Rate (FDR) multiple testing correction method (corrected p < 0.05) and 1.5-fold change cut-off, only 2 microRNAs namely has-miR-4717-5p (miR-4717) and has-miR-642b-5p (miR-642b) were differentially expressed in the GBS patients. These results are represented as a heatmap of the log2 ratio of the treated versus the control group (Fig. 1-A and B). In the GBS group, miR-642b was 1.5-fold change compared with the control group (p = 0.004); the miR-4717 was 3.13
Discussion
In the present study, miRNA expression profiling showed two upregulated miRNAs, miR-4717 and miR-642b, in patients with GBS which was further confirmed by qRT-PCR. A single miRNA usually targets hundreds of mRNA (Friedman et al., 2009). The prediction tools predicted many target genes for the two miRNAs, but with less strong evidence. Zhang et al. reported that miR-4717 may putatively target the 3′ untranslated region of programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) mRNA with rs10204525 allele G in PD1 gene
Study funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81301072, 81401064 and 81271398), the Promotive Research Fund for Excellent Young and Middle-aged Scientists of Shandong Province (BS2013YY021), Shandong Province Natural Science Fund Project (ZR2014HL035) and the Science and Technology Development Project of Jining City, Shandong Province, China (2014jnnk20, 2015jnnk57-50) and Miaopu project of Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University (2013-ZD-003).
Financial disclosure
The authors have no financial disclosures.
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