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Circulating microRNAs involved in multiple sclerosis

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Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated, demyelinating and neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system. After traumatic brain injury, it is the leading cause of neurology disability in young adults. Considerable advances have been made in identifying genes involved in MS but the genetic and phenotypic complexity associated with this disease significantly hinders any progress. A novel class of small RNA molecules, microRNAs (miRNAs) has acquired much attention because they regulate the expression of up to 30% of protein-coding genes and may play a pivotal role in the development of many, if not all, complex diseases. Seven published studies investigated miRNAs from peripheral blood mononuclear cells, CD4+, CD8+ T cell, B lymphocytes, peripheral blood leukocytes, whole blood and brain astrocytes with MS risk. The absence of MS studies investigating plasma miRNA prompted the current investigation of identifying a circulating miRNA signature in MS. We conducted a microarray analysis of over 900 known miRNA transcripts from plasma samples collected from four MS individuals and four sex-aged and ethnicity matched healthy controls. We identified six plasma miRNA (miR-614, miR-572, miR-648, miR-1826, miR-422a and miR-22) that were significantly up-regulated and one plasma miRNA (miR-1979) that was significantly down-regulated in MS individuals. Both miR-422a and miR-22 have previously been implicated in MS. The present study is the first to show a circulating miRNA signature involved in MS that could serve as a potential prognostic and diagnostic biomarker for MS.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the participants in this project. We thank Satoko Takizawa for her technical assistance. This research was supported by funding from a 3D-Gene® Competition Award for Microarray analysis 2009 from Toray Industries. Also, we gratefully acknowledge an MSRA Postgraduate scholarship supporting Jason Mackenzie.

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There is no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, 500 University Drive, MC-H171, Hershey, PA, 17033-0850, USA

    Sue Rutherford Siegel

  2. Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    George Chaplin & Nina G. Jablonski

  3. Genomics Research Centre, Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University Gold Coast Campus, Gold Coast, QLD, 9726, Australia

    Jason Mackenzie & Lyn Griffiths

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  1. Sue Rutherford Siegel
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  2. Jason Mackenzie
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  3. George Chaplin
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  4. Nina G. Jablonski
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  5. Lyn Griffiths
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Correspondence to Sue Rutherford Siegel.

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Siegel, S.R., Mackenzie, J., Chaplin, G. et al. Circulating microRNAs involved in multiple sclerosis. Mol Biol Rep 39, 6219–6225 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-011-1441-7

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