Quantitative prediction of steatosis in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver by means of hepatic microRNAs present in serum and correlating with hepatic fat

We performed global miRNA sequencing analyses in two sets of samples: a) human livers (from organ donors) with a wide range of biochemically quantified triglycerides (n=20), and b) human sera from biopsy proven NAFLD patients with a wide range of liver steatosis quantified in the stained biopsies (n=23). Multivariate Partial Least Square (PLS) regression analyses (with leave one out cross validation) followed by Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) were used to select miRNAs quantitatively associated with steatosis. Finally, PLS regression models with only 2 or 3 miRNAs, with high biological relevance, were built.