Published online Dec 7, 2021. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v27.i45.7801
Peer-review started: April 28, 2021
First decision: June 13, 2021
Revised: June 14, 2021
Accepted: November 20, 2021
Article in press: November 20, 2021
Published online: December 7, 2021
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic and relapsing disorder of the gas
IBD affects 6 to 8 million people worldwide and the incremental increase in the incidence and prevalence globally is indicative of the need for population-based genetic studies including microRNAs (miRNAs) expression profiles.
The present study aimed to investigate the miRNA expression patterns in tissue of treatment-naïve CD and UC patients and the potential pathophysiological contributions of differentially expressed (DE) miRNA in IBD.
A total of 20 formalin-fixed paraffin embedded colonic samples were used in a TaqMan™ Array Human MicroRNA (Applied Biosystems™) platform aiming to analyze 754 miRNAs. After that, targets of DE-miRNAs were predicted using miRNa data integration portal (miRDIP) and the miRNA target interaction database (miRTarBase).
A total of 643 miRNAs were found to be expressed in both diseases but only 13 miRNAs were significantly different between the CD and UC patients (P ≤ 0.05; fold-change > 1). The miRNAs whose expression levels were significantly lower in UC patients than in CD patients (miR-192-3p/5p, miR-378a-3p/5p and miR-429) were enriched in signaling pathways that were mostly correlated with cancer-related processes and respective biomarkers.
Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease presented distinct patterns of miRNA expression that could be useful as new pharmacological targets besides acts as biomarkers for UC-associated CRC.
New studies should be done with the DE-miRNAs using a large number of patients aiming to confirm the differences found in this pilot study. With this confirmation, the DE-miRNAs will be able to be used as pharmacological targets and differential markers for each disease.