Analysis of microRNA proflie of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in HIV-1 infected patients under different clinical status respect to hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.
A total of 117 HIV-1 infected patients were analyzed. These individuals were categorized in three different groups according to their infectious status for HCV: A) HIV+/HCV+ group, (n=45) patients with HIV infection and active HCV-chronic infection naïve to any HCV treatment (positive PCR and positive HCV antibodies); B) HIV+/HCV- group, (n=36) patients who had been exposed to HCV but experienced spontaneous viral clearance during the first 6 months after HCV infection (negative PCR and positive HCV antibodies); C) HIV+ group, (n=36) HIV+ mono-infected patients that had never been infected with HCV (negative PCR, negative HCV antibody and no previous HCV treatment). Briefely, peripheral venous blood samples were collected in EDTA tubes, and PBMCs were isolated within the first 4 hours after extraction.Total RNA including miRNAs were isolated from PBMCs with the miRNeasy Mini kit (Qiagen). Quality and integrity were evaluated by the Bioanalyzer 2100 with Agilent RNA 6000 Nano kit (Agilent). Only those samples with RIN > 7.5 were sequenced. Small RNA library synthesis and sequencing were performed at Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) at Barcelona (Spain). Small RNA libraries were constructed with Illumina's TruSeq Small RNA kit v.4 (Illumina) and 50nts (1x50) were sequenced in an Illumina HiSeq2500, with a single read approach.