Identification of the potential gene regulatory networks and therapeutics in aged mice with postoperative neurocognitive disorder (miRNA)

Postoperative neurocognitive disorder (PND) is one of the most common postoperative neurological complications in aged patients. In order to detect the differential expression profiles of genes caused by PND, a total of 26 18-month-old male C57BL/6 mice were randomly assigned to control group and PND group. Behavioral tests showed that mice in the PND group had impaired cognitive function compared with the control group. Three mice in each group were randomly selected to harvest the brain for analysis the expressions of circRNAs, miRNAs and mRNAs in the prefrontal cortex by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. Differentially expressed genes, including 1192 circRNAs, 27 miRNAs and 266 mRNAs were identified, and its accuracy was further confirmed by qRT-PCR. miRNA expression profiles in the prefrontal cortex of 18-months-old control and PND mice