Circulating isomiRs May Be Superior Biomarkers Compared to Their Corresponding Canonical miRNAs: A Pilot Biomarker Study of Using isomiR-ome to Detect Coronary Calcium-Based Cardiovascular Risk in Patients with NAFLD

Cardiovascular (CV) disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Yet clinically, distinguishing between NAFLD patients with average CV risk from those at elevated risk is not easily achieved by traditional CV risk factors and clinically-based scoring systems. Here we hypothesize that in-depth analysis of circulating miRNAs can identify strong putative biomarkers for the degree of CV risk among patients with NAFLD Plasma miRNAs of 12 NAFLD patients were sequenced by next-generation sequencing (NGS).