Peripheral whole blood microRNA alterations in major depression and bipolar disorder

Abstract

Major depression (MD) and bipolar disorder (BD) are severe and potentially life-threating mood disorders whose etiology is to date not completely understood. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that regulate protein synthesis post-transcriptionally by base-pairing to target gene mRNAs. Growing evidence indicated that miRNAs might play a key role in the pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric disorders and in the action of psychotropic drugs. On these bases, in this study 1 These authors contributed equally to this work 2 we evaluated the expression levels of the entire miRNome 1733 mature miRNAs annotated in miRBase v.17, through a microarray technique, in the blood of 20 MD and 20 BD patients and 20 healthy controls, in order to identify putative miRNA signatures associated with mood disorders.We found that 5 miRNAs (hsa-let-7a-5p, hsa-let-7d-5p, hsa-let-7f-5p, hsa-miR-24-3p and hsa-miR-425-3p) were specifically altered in MD patients and 5 (hsa-miR-140-3p, hsa-miR-30d-5p, hsamiR-330-5p, hsa-miR-378a-5p and hsa-miR-21-3p) in BD patients, whereas 2 miRNAs (hsa-miR-330-3p and hsa-miR-345-5p) were dysregulated in both the diseases. The bioinformatic prediction

Upregulation of let‑7f‑5p promotes chemotherapeutic resistance in colorectal cancer by directly repressing several pro‑apoptotic proteins

“…Previous studies have implicated the altered expression of let-7f-5p in several diseases, including major depression, myasthenia gravis, Alzheimer's disease (40)(41)(42), and neoplastic conditions, including laryngeal carcinoma, CRC and thyroid cancer (43,44). Notably, Pathak et al (45) reported that let-7f-5p was highly upregulated in the human colon cancer HCT116 and SN38 cell lines following radiation treatment in a p53-directed manner, indicating that let-7f-5p may contribute to the chemoresistance of CRC.…”

Exosomes, DAMPs and miRNA: Features of Stress Physiology and Immune Homeostasis

“…While to role of miRNAs has largely been studies in cells, miRNAs can also readily be found in the blood. Furthermore, stress-related disorders such as PTSD and major depression are associated with changes in blood-borne miRNA [47, 48] and intracellular tissue miRNA are changed by stressor exposure [49–52]. Because naked circulating miRNAs are degraded quickly in the bloodstream, most blood-borne miRNA are bound to protective proteins, such as high density lipoprotein and argonaute protein [53, 54], or packaged into protective microvesicles, such as exosomes [26, 27].…”

Circulating miRNA associated with posttraumatic stress disorder in a cohort of military combat veterans

“…miRNAs, which are short, noncoding sequences that typically regulate gene expression by suppressing protein coding mRNA, have been demonstrated to be biomarkers for several psychological disorders, including schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder (Kichukova, Popov, Ivanov, & Vachev, 2016; Maffioletti et al, 2016; Schmidt, Keck, & Buell, 2015). Within the central nervous system, miRNA are considered to play a major role in gene expression regulation (Kuss & Chen, 2008; Martinetz, 2016); however, the specific role of miRNAs in PTSD remains largely unknown.…”