MicroRNA expression profiles in peripheral blood and skin lesions of patients with psoriasis vulgaris

Abstract

Objective To investigate microRNA (miRNA) expression profiles in peripheral blood and skin lesions of patients with psoriasis vulgaris (PV) , and to seek miRNAs consistently expressed in peripheral blood and skin lesions. Methods A miRNA microarray was used to screen differentially expressed miRNAs in skin lesions and peripheral blood samples between 17 patients with PV and 4 healthy human controls, and real-time fluorescence-based quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) to verify the differentially expressed miRNAs. The correlations of these differentially expressed miRNAs with psoriasis area and severity index (PASI) score were assessed by Pearson correlation analysis. Results The Agilent human miRNA microarray profiling revealed 15 miRNAs consistently expressed in skin lesions and peripheral blood of patients with PV. Of the 15 miRNAs, 7 were verified as consistently expressed miRNAs by RT-qPCR. Among the 7 miRNAs, the expression intensity of miR-30e-5p, miR-192-5p, miR-17-3p and miR-1227-5p was negatively correlated with PASI scores (all P 0.05) . Conclusion Some miRNAs are consistently expressed in skin lesions and plasma of PV patients, which are expected to serve as biomarkers for evaluation of psoriasis severity. Key words: Psoriasis; MicroRNAs; Microchip analytical procedures; Gene expression profiling; Severity of illness index