Plasma levels of miR-21, miR-150, miR-423 in patients with lupus nephritis

MicroRNAs (miRNA) are involved in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease, and can be considered as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. Lupus nephritis (LN) remains a major challenge of SLE since it damages the kidneys in the course of the disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic values of circulating miR-21, miR-148a, miR-150, and miR-423 involved in autoimmunity and kidney fibrosis in plasma samples of LN cases (N = 26) and healthy controls (N = 26) using quantitative- PCR (qPCR). The possible associations between the microRNAs and clinical parameters and their diagnostic values were also calculated. The levels of circulating miR-21 (P < .001) and miR-423 (P < .05) significantly increased, while miR-150 decreased in LN (P > .05) patients as compared with healthy controls. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis indicated that miR-21 was superior in discriminating LN patients from controls with an Area Under Curve (AUC) of 0.912 [95% CI = 0.83 to 0.99, P < .001], whereas the multivariate ROC curve analysis revealed the high accuracy [AUC = 0.93, P < .001, 79% sensitivity and 83% specificity] of the miR-21, -150, and -423 to differentiate LN from controls. The involvement of the studied miRNAs in renal fibrosis and the obtained results make it rational to speculate that they may be used as potential biomarkers in LN.