BackgroundMiRNAs are considered to be significant contributors to the pathogenesis of psychiatric diseases, but little is known about the potential roles of miRNAs in the treatment effect of panic disorder (PD). Therefore, we aimed to identify the miRNAs association with PD over the course of sertraline treatment. MethodsSixty-seven patients were collected for a 6-week period of sertraline treatment, and evaluated using HAMD-17, HAMA-14 and PDSS both at the baseline and 6 weeks later. Blood samples were collected before and after treatment, respectively. Ten pairs of samples were analyzed using miRNA array, and the differentially expressed miRNAs were further validated using RT-PCR in the whole sample. ResultsmiR-451a, miR-144-5p, miR-25-3p and miR-660-5p were found to be significantly up-regulated, while miR-1 and miR-148-5p significantly down-regulated after sertraline treatment. The change of miR-25-3p before and after treatment (â–łmiR-25-3p) was positively related to both the changes of PDSS3 scores (â–łPDSS3) (p = 0.017, 31.5% contribution) and â–ł PDSS7 (p = 0.016, 32.3% contribution). The â–łmiR-660-5p was positively related to both the â–łHAMA5 (p = 0.03, 26% contribution) and â–łPDSS7 (p = 0.032). The â–łmiR-148-5p was positively related to the â–łPDSS4 (p = 0.046, 21.5% contribution), but negatively related to the â–łHAMA13 (p = 0.005, 41.9% contribution). The â–łmiR-144-5p was negatively related to the â–łHAMA9 (p = 0.032, 25.3% contribution). ConclusionsThese findings might provide some evidences to the involvement of miRNA in the effect of anti-anxiety agents, which contributed to the better understanding the disease and developing new therapeutic genetic targets.