Abstract
Introduction
Lumbar disc herniation (LDH) is one of the major causes for back and sciatic pain that costs large medical expense. Accumulating evidence has indicated that microRNAs (miRNAs), a small non-coding RNA molecule, are associated with disc degeneration, the profile of miRNAs in the LDH patients with indication for laminectomy remains unclear.
Material and Methods
MicroRNA profiling was performed on plasma samples of 4 groups: LDH-young group (n = 8, average age is 31), LDH-old group (n = 8, average age is 56), healthy control-young group (n = 4, average age is 20), healthy control-old group (n = 6, average age is 58). The miRNAs expression were further validated by qRT-PCR.
Results
The miRNAs with p-values < 0.05 and fold change values ≥2 or ≤ 0.5 compared with healthy control were regarded as dysregulated miRNAs. 61 miRNAs were upregulated and 302 were downregulated in LDH-young group compared with healthy control-young group. In addition, there are 46 upregulated miRNAs and 115 downregulated in LDH-old group compared with healthy control-old group. In particular, 12 upregulated and 71 downregulated miRNAs expressed significant differences both in the LDH-young group vs healthy control-young group and the LDH-old group vs healthy control-old group. Among them, miR-224 was upregulated 4.04-, 16.99-fold in LDH-young and LDH-old groups compared with healthy control-young and healthy control-old groups, respectively (p < 0.01 for both). Besides, relative to old groups, miR-130b and miR-147b were downregulated significantly in young groups, both of which were reported to be associated with disc degeneration.
Conclusion
The selected miRNAs might play a vital role in the molecular pathogenesis of LDH and further research for the understanding of the functionality and pathological mechanism of the miRNAs in LDH is important and would shed new light on LDH.