The expression of circulating hsa-miR-126-3p in dengue-infected Thai pediatric patients

ABSTRACT

Circulating hsa-miRNA-126 (CmiR-126) has been reported to involve in the pathogenesis of many infectious diseases including dengue virus infection. However, no prior study has been conducted to describe more details in dengue-infected pediatric patients. This study aimed to describe CmiR-126-3p in dengue-infected pediatric patients during the febrile and convalescent phases. Additionally, the correlations between CmiR-126-3p and other relevant clinical laboratory factors were investigated. Sixty paired-serum specimens collected during febrile and convalescent phases were retrieved from patients with dengue fever (DF) (n = 30) and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) (n = 30). Thirty paired-serum specimens collected from non-dengue acute febrile illness patients (AFI) were included as the control group. CmiR-126-3p was determined using reverse transcription quantitative real-time polymerase-chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Relative miRNA expression was calculated as 2^−ΔCt using CmiR-16-5p for data normalization. CmiR-126-3p expression during febrile and convalescent phases in dengue-infected patients was significantly lower than AFI (p < 0.05). However, miRNA levels were not different (p > 0.05) compared between DF and DHF and between primary and secondary infection. CmiR-126-3p levels in DF in the convalescent were significantly higher than in the febrile phase (p = 0.025). No association between CmiR-126-3p and hematocrit, WBC level, platelet count, WBC differential count or dengue viral load was observed (p > 0.05). The data suggest that hsa-miR-126-3p involved in pathogenesis of dengue infection and may be a promising early and late biomarker for DENV infection. However, hsa-miR-126-3p alone cannot be used as a predictor for dengue severity.

KEYWORDS:

• hsa-miR-126-3p
• circulating miRNA
• biomarker
• dengue virus
• pediatric

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thanks Emeritus Prof. Arunee Sabchareon, MD for kindly providing serum specimens for this study. The authors also thank to the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand; Department of Tropical Pediatrics, Faculty of Tropical Medicine and TROPMED Dengue Diagnostic Center (TDC), Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand for cooperating this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed to this project including manuscript preparation. M.S. designed and performed experiments, reviewed and analyzed data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. J.R and P.S. performed the experiments and collected data. S.C. and K.L. designed the experiments and reviewed data including manuscript. C.S. designed the experiments, reviewed data and involved in manuscript review, editing, and correction. All authors have reviewed and approved the final version of this manuscript.

Ethical declaration

This project was reviewed and approved by The Ethics Committee of Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Thailand (MUTM 2018-022-01). Procedures conducted in this study were in accordance with the standard criteria of the responsible committee on human experimentation (The Human Ethical Research Committee of Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Thailand) and with the Declaration of Helsinki 1975 (revised in 2000).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Thailand Research Fund (TRF) and Office of the Higher Education Commission, Thailand under Grant [MRG6180126].