Hepatic MIR-122-3P, MIR-140-5P and MIR-148B-5P expressions are correlated with cytokeratin-18 serum levels in MAFLD

Introduction and Objectives

This study aimed to investigate the expression and correlation of miR-140-5p, miR-148-5p and miR-122-3p in the liver with circulating levels of CK-18, APOB, IL-6, IL-32, TNF-α of patients with and without MAFLD who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

Material and methods

Cross-sectional study in patients scheduled for elective cholecystectomy, from whom anthropometric and biochemical variables, blood samples and liver biopsy were obtained with prior signed informed consent. A qRT-PCR assay was performed from the liver biopsies RNA, to determine the microRNAs expression levels. ELISA assay was used to measure circulating levels of CK-18, APOB, IL-6, IL-32, TNF-α. The patients were classified according to the histological report as control group and MAFLD.

Results

Circulating plasma levels of CK-18 showed a significant difference (p=0.001) between the control (46.5pg/mL) and MAFLD (230.2pg/mL) groups; the rest of the explored markers showed no difference. The results show a very strong correlation between, miR-122-3p (rho= 0.071 p= 0.001) and CK-18 levels, while with miR-140-5p (rho= 0.564, p= 0.023) and hsa-miR-148b-5p (rho = 0.689, p= 0.003) are strong.

Discussion

We show that the expression of the microRNAs studied is related to CK-18 circulating levels in patients with MAFLD, which makes these potential molecules biomarkers.

Conclusion

There is a very strong correlation between hepatic expression levels of miR-122-3p, miR-140-5P and miR-148-5P and circulating levels of CK-18 in patients with MAFLD.

Funding

The resources used in this study were from the hospital without any additional financing

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest.