Plasma long non-coding RNAs ASMTL-AS1, AP001363.1, AC005730.3 and AL133415.1 as a potential biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease

ABSTRACT

Background

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play critical role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. Human plasma contains lncRNAs that are present in the blood, and their disease-specific profile has been considered a potential biomarker in some diseases.

Methods

This study reports screening of the plasma levels of lncRNAs between Alzheimer disease(AD) (n = 45) and matched healthy controls (n = 45). The plasma samples of 5 AD patients and 5 matched healthy controls were randomly selected for expression levels of lncRNAs using the TruSeq RNA Sample Prep Kit (Illumina). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and area under the curve (AUC) were used to study the potential of lncRNAs as biomarkers.

Results

The differential expression profiles of plasma showed that 514 lncRNAs were upregulated, whereas 499 lncRNAs were downregulated.We found that the lncRNAs AL133415.1, AC020916.1, ENST00000654948, ASMTL-AS, AC005730.3, and AP001363.1 levels in the plasma of the AD patients were significantly lower compared to the control group (p1 = 0.0006, p2 < 0.001, p3 < 0.001, p4 = 0.039, p5 = 0.006, p6 < 0.001, respectively). ROC curve analysis revealed that the AUC of AL133415.1 was 0.635 (95% CI]: 0.507–0.763, p = 0.036), the AUC of ASMTL-AS1 was 0.658 (95% CI: 0.513–0.785, p = 0.015), the AUC of AC005730.3 was 0.627 (95%CI: 0.498–0.756, p = 0.049), and the AUC of AP001363.1 was 0.708 (95%CI: 0.595–0.822, p = 0.001).

Conclusion

This study indicated that the plasma levels of the lncRNAs ASMTL-AS1, AP001363.1, AC005730.3, and AL133415.1 might be considered potential biomarkers for AD in the Chinese Population.

KEYWORDS:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• long non-coding RNA
• RNA sequencing
• bioinformatics analysis
• biomarker

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the family members for participating in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Yi Cheng, Ting Zou, Lei Zhang, Lihua Li, Chang Yang, Long Ma, and Xiaohui Zhou. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yi Cheng and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Consent for publication

All authors agree to publish this study.

Data availability statement

Data supporting this study are available from the corresponding author [Long Ma] upon reasonable request.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of the First Clinical Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University (No:20130216–66). Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81360064), the High Technology Research and Development Projects of Xinjiang Province (No. 201517104), and the National Natural Science Foundation of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (No.2022D01C232).