title: Clinical significance of intragraft miR-122 and -155 expression after liver transplantation.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Recurrent hepatitis C (RHC) and acute cellular rejection (AR) remain critical problems following liver transplantation (LT) in hepatitis C virus (HCV) positive recipients because of the similar clinical features. Discrimination between these conditions can be problematic, and adjunctive biomarkers would be useful to discriminate these processes. The aim of our study was to investigate the possibility of the intragraft miR-122 and -155 expression as new biomarkers after LT.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 29 HCV positive recipients were enrolled in this study. Intragraft expressions of miR-122 and -155 were studied between RHC predominant (n = 17) and AR predominant cases (n = 12) using quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Furthermore, we investigated the correlations between these expression levels and clinical serum parameters.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Intragraft miR-122 expression had a good correlation with serum alkaline phosphatase (P = 0.02), but it was not correlated with the serum HCV viral load. The expression levels of miR-122 in the AR group were significantly higher than those in the RHC group (P = 0.0006) and, inversely, the expression levels of miR-155 in the AR group were significantly lower than those in the RHC group (P = 0.01).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study emphasizes a useful pattern of miR-122 and -155 as ancillary markers to discriminate AR predominant cases from RHC in HCV positive patients after LT.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Tadafumi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Asaoka
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Dayami
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hernandez
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tryphonopoulos
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Akin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tekin
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Seigo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nishida
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Ji
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Thiago
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Beduschi
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Rodrigo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vianna
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Phillip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ruiz
keywords: acute cellular rejection; hepatitis C; liver transplantation; miRNA; molecular biomarker