Regulation of hepatic microRNAs in response to early stage Echinococcus multilocularis egg enfection in C57BL/6 mice

We report a comprehensive analysis of the hepatic miRNA transcriptome at one-month post-infection of experimental primary alveolar echinococcosis (AE), a parasitic infection a parasitic infection caused upon ingestion of E. multilocularis eggs. In infected mice, the expression levels of 28 miRNAs were significantly altered. Of these, 9 were up-regulated and 19 were down-regulated as compared to the non-infected controls. We also studied the issue related to functionally mature arm selection preference (5p and/or 3p) from the miRNA precursor and showed that 9 pre-miRNAs exhibited different arm selection preferences in normal versus infected liver tissues. In conclusion, this study provides first evidence that miRNAs are regulated early in primary murine AE. Thus, further research on the regulation of miRNAs during AE is needed, since miRNAs constitute an attractive potential option for development of novel therapeutic approaches against AE. Hepatic miRNA profiles of 1-month E. multilocularis- infected mice (3 mice) and non-infected mice (2 mice) were produced by next-generation sequencing, using Illumina NextSeq 500 instrument.