Peripheral blood miR‑372 as a biomarker for ulcerative colitis via direct targeting of NLRP12

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the expression pattern and underlying mechanism of microRNA-372 (miR-372) in the progression of ulcerative colitis (UC). Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to measure miR-372 expression levels in the blood and colonic mucosa tissue samples from patients with UC. The present study demonstrated that levels of miR-372 were significantly increased in the blood and colonic mucosa tissue samples from patients with UC compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, the level of serum miR-372 was positively correlated with the level of serum c-reactive protein. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated that levels of miR-372 detected in serum and tissue samples could be used to screen for patients with UC from healthy controls. These results indicated a potential role of miR-372 as a diagnostic marker and therapeutic target for patients with UC. Furthermore, a conserved miR-372 binding site in the 3'untranslated region of the NLR family pyrin domain containing 12 (NLRP12) was identified. Dual luciferase assay demonstrated that overexpression of miR-372 significantly reduced the relative luciferase activity of pmirGLO-NLRP12-3'UTR compared with control pmirGLO. In addition, western blot analysis indicated that overexpression of miR-372 significantly decreased the protein expression level of NLRP12. Therefore it was hypothesized that miR-372 may promote the progression of UC by suppressing NLRP12 protein expression and thereby inducing the excessive production of inflammatory cytokines. In conclusion, high levels of miR-372 detected in peripheral blood samples may serve a role as a potential biomarker to screen potential patients with UC from healthy controls.

MicroRNAs as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The remaining 305 full-text articles were screened and 188 were excluded according to the exclusion criteria. Finally, 117 primary articles of expression profile studies were included in the systematic review, of which 15 studies 9 , 18 – 31 about diagnostic accuracy were included in the meta-analysis ( Table 1 ). Thirty-one studies only reported altered miRNA expression using various high-throughput miRNA chips (Table S2), and 71 studies detected miRNA expression using qPCR or quantitative in situ hybridization (ISH) (Table S3).…”

Circulating miR-106b-5p serves as a diagnostic biomarker for asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis and predicts the occurrence of cerebral ischemic events

“…For example, a high level of miR-372 in peripheral blood samples has proved to be a potential biomarker to screen patients with ulcerative colitis from healthy controls. 21 In human cancers, several miRNAs have been identified to be candidate biomarkers for noninvasive screening, such as miR-520f, miR-1290, and miR-21. [22][23][24] Recent researches suggest the potential role of several miRNAs in the pathogenesis of CAS, which may be involved in the evolution of carotid plaque toward growth, instability, and rupture.…”

Novel Biomarkers in the Diagnosis of Benign and Malignant Gastrointestinal Diseases

“…In 2008, deregulated miR-NAs have been identified in the colonic tissues of patients with UC [66]. Since then, there have been several reports stating correlation of ncRNA expression between colonic tissues and peripheral blood or feces [67,68], and ncRNA expression is continuously investigated in feces or peripheral blood and its components. Several studies have reported distinct ncRNA expression in feces of IBD patients and healthy controls [69][70][71][72], and many studies have reported altered ncRNA expression in the peripheral blood of IBD patients [67,68,71,[73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92], although there are differences in the amount of deregulated ncRNAs and their diagnostic accuracy being reported.…”

“…Since then, there have been several reports stating correlation of ncRNA expression between colonic tissues and peripheral blood or feces [67,68], and ncRNA expression is continuously investigated in feces or peripheral blood and its components. Several studies have reported distinct ncRNA expression in feces of IBD patients and healthy controls [69][70][71][72], and many studies have reported altered ncRNA expression in the peripheral blood of IBD patients [67,68,71,[73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92], although there are differences in the amount of deregulated ncRNAs and their diagnostic accuracy being reported. While some studies show unremarkable accuracy of ncRNAs in distinguishing between patients and healthy controls with receiver operating characteristics analysis showing an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.65-0.79 [80,84,86], others report really promising results with an AUC of 0.97-0.99 for miRNA pairs of miR-215/miR-30e-Dig Dis 2022;40:1-13 DOI: 10.1159/000515522 3p, miR-215/miR-145, and miR-203/miR-145 [81]; 0.94 for serum miR-372 [67]; 0.88 for fecal miR-223 [71]; and 0.91 for miR-874-3p in distinguishing between colonic Crohn's disease and UC.…”