“…They are approximately~22 nucleotides in length and are expressed in a tissue-or cell-specific manner (Lagos-Quintana et al, 2002). Among them, a set of miRNAs have been confirmed to play fundamental roles in gene regulation of various orthopedic diseases, such as bone tumors (Kafchinski and Jones, 2014), osteoarthritis (Miyaki and Asahara, 2012), and rheumatoid arthritis (Furer et al, 2010). Although several miRNAs have been independently reported (Yamasaki et al, 2012;Sun et al, 2014;Jia et al, 2014), and one preliminary review discussing circulating microRNAs in ONFH has been written (Wang, X. et al, 2014;Wang, Y. et al, 2014), the miRNA expression profile of ONFH remains unclear.…”