Elevated serum miR-106b and miR-146a in patients with focal and generalized epilepsy

Background: Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurring seizures. Although scalp electroencephalograms (EEG) and neuroimaging have been used in clinical diagnosis of epilepsy, the more economical, rapid and non-invasive biomarker is still desirable, contributing to the accurate clinical diagnosis and facilitating the appropriate treatment. Methods: The expression of four epilepsy-associated miRNAs (miR-106b, miR-146a, miR-194-5p and miR-301a) was measured by quantitative RT-PCR in the serum of 90 epilepsy patients and control populations. Results: It was found that the serum miR-106b, miR-146a and miR-301a were significantly increased but serum miR-194-5p was significantly decreased in epilepsy patients compared with healthy control populations. In addition, serum miR-106b (r = 0.6412) and miR-146a (r = 0.5896) were correlated with NHS3 score in epilepsy patients. Furthermore, the ROC result of serum miR-106b for prediction of epilepsy was 0.786, higher than those of serum miR-146a (AUC = 0.774), miR-194 (AUC = 0.686) or miR-310a (AUC = 0.696). The combination of serum miR-106b and miR-146a gained a better sensitivity/specificityfor prediction of epilepsy (AUC = 0.887). Conclusion: Our preliminary findings indicate that upregulated serum miR-106b and miR-146a might be a potential biomarker for epilepsy evaluation. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.