Differential expression of miRNA 155 and miRNA 146a in Parkinson's disease patients

Abstract

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder and its etiology is unknown, numerous studies show how different environmental factors can influence the development of disease. miRNAs are involved in several pathologies and their dysregulation contribute to different pathologies, also in neurodegenerative such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In this study, we profiled the expression of different candidate miRNAs: miR-155, miR-26a, miR-146a, and miR132, in PBMCs of L-dopa treated Parkinson patients and unaffected controls (HCs).We investigated the expression of miRNAs by RT-real time PCR, the results were subjected to statistical analysis. miRNA-155-5p was generally up-regulated in PD patients compared to HCs whereas miRNA-146a-5p was down-regulated in PD patients in comparison to HCs. It is interesting to point out that the expression of miR-155-5p was modified by levodopa treatment, in fact a down-regulation of miR-155-5p in PD patients with the highest dosage was observed. In conclusion, miRNA 155 could not only be a promising target for the anti-inflammatory therapy in PD but also a good candidate as a disease progression biomarker. The role of levodopa in modulating the levels of miRNA 155 requires further studies.

Keywords: Levo-dopa treatment; Neurodegeneration; Parkinson's disease; miRNA.

Fig. 1

Heat map of microRNA (miRNA) microarray expression date from plasma samples of PD patients (PD 37) and Healthy controls (HCs 43). The miRNA species are shown on the left. Cluster analysis classified tha samples in groups based on the miRNA expression levels in each samples. The dendogram shows different expression levels of miRNA among samples. Red indicates high expression of miRNA, and green indicates relatively low expression of miRNA. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 2

The Column Chart showing the average miRNA expression in different grouped of PD patients. A) The PD patients are divided according to different dosage of Levodopa. B) The PD patients are divided according to different degree of disability. C) The PD patients are divided according to positivity of UL42 peptide.