Elevated serum miR-106b and miR-146a in patients with focal and generalized epilepsy.
Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurring seizures. Although scalp electroencephalograms (EEG) and neuroimaging have been used in clinical diagnosis of epilepsy, the more economical, rapid and non-invasive biomarker is still desirable, contributing to the accurate clinical diagnosis and facilitating the appropriate treatment.



The expression of four epilepsy-associated miRNAs (miR-106b, miR-146a, miR-194-5p and miR-301a) was measured by quantitative RT-PCR in the serum of 90 epilepsy patients and control populations.



It was found that the serum miR-106b, miR-146a and miR-301a were significantly increased but serum miR-194-5p was significantly decreased in epilepsy patients compared with healthy control populations. In addition, serum miR-106b (r=0.6412) and miR-146a (r=0.5896) were correlated with NHS3 score in epilepsy patients. Furthermore, the ROC result of serum miR-106b for prediction of epilepsy was 0.786, higher than those of serum miR-146a (AUC=0.774), miR-194 (AUC=0.686) or miR-310a (AUC=0.696). The combination of serum miR-106b and miR-146a gained a better sensitivity/specificity for prediction of epilepsy (AUC=0.887).



Our preliminary findings indicate that upregulated serum miR-106b and miR-146a might be a potential biomarker for epilepsy evaluation.
Department of neurology (section II), HongQi Hospital, MuDanJiang Medical College, China. Electronic address: ningan2014@126.com.
Ning
N
An
Department of anatomy, MuDanJiang Medical College, China. Electronic address: weizhaowz@163.com.
Wei
W
Zhao
Department of anatomy, MuDanJiang Medical College, China. Electronic address: yancuiL2008@sina.com.
Yancui
Y
Liu
Department of neurology (section II), HongQi Hospital, MuDanJiang Medical College, China. Electronic address: Yangxf2012@sina.com.
Xiaofan
X
Yang
Department of pathophysiology, MuDanJiang Medical College, China. Electronic address: Chenp0027@sina.com.
Pei
P
Chen
D000328:Adult; D019540:Area Under Curve; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood; D004829:Epilepsy, Generalized / Q000097:blood*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000097:blood*; D012372:ROC Curve; D060888:Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012720:Severity of Illness Index
D015415:Biomarkers; C542541:MIRN106 microRNA, human; C542542:MIRN146 microRNA, human; C554846:MIRN194 microRNA, human; C550735:MIRN301A microRNA, human; D035683:MicroRNAs
Biomarker; Circulating miRNA; Epilepsy; miR-106b; miR-146a