Affiliations: [a] Department of Neurology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital, School of Medicine, Qingdao University, Shandong, China | [b] Department of Neurology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital, College of Medicine and Pharmaceutics, Ocean University of China, Shandong, China | [c] Department of Neurology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Jiangsu, China
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Lan Tan or Jin-Tai Yu, Department of Neurology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital, School of Medicine, Qingdao University, No. 5 Donghai Middle Road, Qingdao, Shandong Province 266071, China. Tel./Fax: +86 532 8890 5659; E-mails: dr.tanlan@163.com; yu-jintai@163.com.
Note: [1] These authors contributed equally to this manuscript.
Abstract: Recent findings that human serum contains stably expressed microRNAs (miRNAs) have revealed a great potential of serum miRNA signature as disease fingerprints to diagnosis. Here we used genome-wide serum miRNA expression analysis to investigate the value of serum miRNAs as biomarkers for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencing followed by individual quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assays was used to test the difference in levels of serum miRNAs between 50 AD patients and 50 controls in the screening stages. The detected serum miRNAs then were validated by qRT-PCR in 158 patients and 155 controls. MiR-98-5p, miR-885-5p, miR-483-3p, miR-342-3p, miR-191-5p, and miR-let-7d-5p displayed significantly different expression levels in AD patients compared with controls. Among the 6 miRNAs, miR-342-3p has the best sensitivity (81.5%) and specificity (70.1%) and was correlated to Mini-Mental State Examination score. This study identified six serum miRNAs that distinguish AD patients from healthy controls with high sensitivity and specificity. Serum miRNA panel (or miR-342-3p alone) may serve as a novel, noninvasive biomarker for AD.
