Up-regulation of circulating miR-93-5p in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis

Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating in which there is no standardized method to detect this disease activity. It has shown abnormal microRNAs (miRNAs) function in peripheral blood immune cells. miRNAs expression is probably responsible for immunological features associated with MS. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the association of miR-93-5p expression with MS disease. Materials and methods: In this case-control study, a totally of 30 relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) patients and 30 healthy subjects were enrolled. Following miRNA extraction and cDNA synthesis, miR- 93-5p expression was examined in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) using real-time polymerase chain reaction. Results: The expression of miR-93-5p was significantly increased in RRMS patients compared to healthy subjects (P=0.001). Receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis identified a strong predictive power of miR‑93-5p on discriminating MS from healthy individuals, with the area under the curve (AUC) of 0.939 (95% CI; 0.8581-1.000). On the other hand, the samples were analyzed based on the type of drug treatment (interferon and non-interferon), which did not show any considerable differences (P=0.863). Conclusion: Our findings showed that miR-93-5p has highly elevated expression in patients with RRMS compared to healthy subjects. Based on the results miR-93-5p may be a prospective biomarker with the potential use for diagnosis of RRMS patients.