Abstract

To investigate serum microRNA (miRNA) profile and bioinformatics of patients with spleen-deficiency syndrome (SDS) and explore pathogenesis of SDS patients from miRNA levels, 10 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), within which 5 patients were with SDS and the remaining were with blood stasis syndrome (BSS), and 5 healthy volunteers were recruited. Serum miRNA profiles of SDS patients were identified by quantitative PCR array. Target prediction and functional annotation for miRNAs were performed by miRSystem database. The present study identified 11 candidate serum miRNAs for SDS patients, and their targets were significantly enriched in 18 KEGG pathways and 7 GO molecular functions. Those enriched KEGG pathways included (1) metabolisms of carbohydrate, protein, amino acid, and fatty acid, (2) signaling pathways of insulin, ErbB, chemokine, calcium, and type II diabetes mellitus, (3) invasions of bacterium, Escherichia coli, and Shigella (Shigellosis), and (4) endocytosis and phagocytosis. Those enriched GO molecular functions were mainly involved in transcription regulation and regulation of metabolism. Our findings might elucidate the pathogenesis of SDS patients with disorders of substance metabolism and hypoimmunity from miRNA levels, as well as providing some miRNA biomarkers for clinical syndrome differentiation of SDS.

Highlights

  • Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theory considers that spleen, named as “Pi” in Chinese, is a comprehensive functional unit which is mainly involved in the digestive system as well as a wide variety of systems such as immune system

  • Out of 372 tested mature miRNAs, 27 miRNAs were significant differentially expressed between type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)-Spleen-deficiency syndrome (SDS) patients and healthy volunteers, with 5 downregulated and 22 upregulated miRNAs

  • The present study revealed differential serum miRNA expression profile between T2DM-SDS patients and T2DM-blood stasis syndrome (BSS) patients or healthy volunteers by low density miRNA qPCR array

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Summary

Introduction

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theory considers that spleen, named as “Pi” in Chinese, is a comprehensive functional unit which is mainly involved in the digestive system as well as a wide variety of systems such as immune system. Our previous studies in gene expression profile found that differentially expressed genes of SDS patients were mainly related to substance metabolism and immune regulation, and most of these genes were downregulated [1,2,3]. This finding had been partially confirmed by other studies in cooperative institution [4,5,6,7]. Gene expression profiling enables researchers to observe expressions for tens of thousands of genes in a tissue simultaneously, which may be similar to the “holistic view” of TCM. The differentially expressed gene is difficult to be used as biomarker for clinical diagnosis due to too many quantities

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