Next generation sequencing identifies circulating microRNAs in cardiac arrest patients

The goal of this study is to identify circulating microRNAs with prognostic value in a large cohort of comatose survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. We performed RNA-Seq for short RNAs in plasma, collected 48 hours after return of spontaneous circulation, of 50 cardiac arrest patients including 25 good neurological outcome at 6 months (cerebral performance category 1) and 25 poor neurological outcome including death at 6 months (cerebral performance category score 5). The sequencing generated on average 18.5 million reads per sample. After mapping the reads and counting to relevant entries in miRBase 20, we found 236 microRNAs detected in all 50 samples with TPM above or equals to 1. 11 microRNAs were differentially expressed between 2 groups with False Discovery Rate (FDR) < 5%. Overall design: Plasma microRNA profiles of 50 cardiac arrest patients, including 25 good neurological outcome (cerebral performance category score 1, CPC1) and 25 bad neurological outcome (cerebral performance category score 5, CPC5) at 6 months.