Altered Circulating miRNA Expression Profile in Pregestational and Gestational Obesity

Abstract

This study provides the first identification of altered circulating miRNAs in maternal obesity and suggests a possible role of such miRNAS as markers for pre- and postnatal growth.

Maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index and circulating microRNAs in pregnancy

“…The small sample size in the epigenome-wide miRNA expression profiling may have increased imprecision of statistical estimates. Our study, however, is similar in size to the lone previous analysis of miRNA levels in maternal plasma in relation to obesity 21 . The large number of tests we conducted in the analyses of the epigenome-wide profiling data may increase the likelihood of false positives.…”

“…These included miR-130b, (targeting PPARG), let-7 (targeting HMGA2, E2F6, and CDC34), -103 (targeting ARNT, FZD1, RUNX1T1, ETO, MTG8, PDK1 and WNT3A), -221/222 (targeting CDKN1B and p27), -423-5p (targeting CD1C), -26 (targeting EZH2 and SMAD1), -128-2 (targeting TXNIP), -146b (targeting NFKB), -29 (targeting HDAC4), -425 (targeting PTEN) and -376 (targeting ATG4C and BECN1). 12–21, 29–38 It is important to note that the direction of associations (upregulation or downregulation) for some of these miRNAs was not similar in several of the studies, including our own. This may be due to differences in samples used for the expression measurements, and needs further investigation.…”

“…21 This study by Carreras-Badosa et al was conducted in the setting of prenatal primary care in Girona (Spain) among 70 pregnant women who had uncomplicated pregnancies. The authors identified 18 miRNAs that were differentially expressed in plasma (during the second trimester of pregnancy), in relation to maternal obesity.…”

“…19–20 To our knowledge, only one recent study conducted in Europe, investigated circulating miRNAs in pregnancy in relation to pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI). 21 In two well-characterized cohorts, the Omega study and the Pregnancy Outcomes and Community Health (POUCH) study, based in Washington State and Michigan, respectively, we conducted secondary analyses of epigenome-wide data to examine whether pre-pregnancy BMI is associated with early-mid pregnancy circulating miRNA expression.…”

miR‐30a‐5p inhibition promotes interaction of Fas+endothelial cells and FasL+microglia to decrease pathological neovascularization and promote physiological angiogenesis

“…Analysis of these vesicles showed that miR-30a-5p (miR-30a) was one of the most enriched miRs. miR-30a is particularly interesting as increased expression is associated with ischemia and vascular comorbidities such as obesity, diabetes, stroke, and subarachnoid hemorrhage (Carreras-Badosa et al, 2015;Long et al, 2013;Muller et al, 2015;Nielsen et al, 2012). Finally, miR-30a is highly expressed in proliferating endothelial cells in vitro (Anand et al, 2010), is enriched in microglia (Butovsky et al, 2014), and has recently been shown to be one of the 10 most abundant miRNAs in the human retina (Karali et al, 2016).…”