Diagnostic and Correlative Analysis of Circrnas in Bone Marrow and Peripheral Blood of Patients with Refractory Cytopenia with Multilineage Dysplasia

Abstract

This study was to detect expression levels of circular RNA (circRNA) in bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB) of patients with refractory cytopenia with multilineage dysplasia (RCMD). The objective was to identify circRNAs with potential diagnostic value and investigate the correlation between these circRNAs in BM and PB of RCMD patients.We first analyzed circRNAs in the BM of 5 RCMD patients and 4 control subjects using circRNA arrays. We found 369 circRNAs were differentially expressed between these two groups; 145 were upregulated and 224 were down regulated. Using a set of stringent criteria, we selected 10 circRNAs as potential biomarkers and verified their expression levels in 115 RCMD patients and 20 control subjects. 6 circRNAs were increased in RCMD patients while 3 were decreased and 1 showed no difference. ROC analysis using the same cohort confirmed 8 of these 9 circRNAs could be potential diagnostic biomarkers. We then tested the expression levels of these 10 circRNAs in PB samples from same 115 RCMD patients. There was no correlation between expression levels of these 10 circRNAs in BM and PB samples. This suggested that 10 circRNAs identified in BM samples could not be insteaded by circRNAs in PB samples. Funding: This work was supported in part by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#81500099) and Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission (#16ZR1404400). Declaration of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. Ethical Approval: The study was approved by the institutional review board at Huashan Hospital of Fudan University and informed consents were obtained from each study participant.