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 Overall design: Plasma miRNAs of 12 NAFLD patients were sequenced by next-generation sequencing (NGS).

心血管（Cardiovascular, CV）疾病是非酒精性脂肪性肝病（Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, NAFLD）患者发病与死亡的首要原因。然而临床实践中，仅凭传统心血管风险因子及基于临床的评分系统，难以甄别非酒精性脂肪性肝病患者中普通心血管风险与高心血管风险人群。本研究提出假设：对循环微核糖核酸（microRNAs, miRNAs）开展深度分析，可识别出用于区分非酒精性脂肪性肝病患者心血管风险等级的潜在强效生物标志物。实验设计：对12名非酒精性脂肪性肝病患者的血浆微核糖核酸进行下一代测序（Next-Generation Sequencing, NGS）。