LOC152742 as a biomarker in the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis infection

Long intergenic noncoding RNAs are long noncoding transcripts from the intergenic regions of annotated protein-coding genes. The elevated expression of long noncoding RNA (lnRNA) LOC152742 has been found in tuberculosis infection yet its roles in antimycobacterial responses remain to be elucidated.

In this study, the expression levels of LOC152742 in sputum, plasma of normal individuals, active tuberculosis patients, obsolete tuberculosis patients, and individuals affected with bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) were analyzed by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), and the sensitivity and specificity of the candidate biomarker LOC152742 were obtained. At the same time, the expression levels of LOC152742 in pulmonary epithelial and macrophages cells infected with H37Ra or H37Rv were detected by qRT-PCR.

LOC152742 in sputum and plasma had a higher specificity in active tuberculosis compared with that in obsolete tuberculosis and BCG patients. Additionally, LOC152742 in pulmonary epithelial cells macrophages infected with H37Ra or H37Rv was increased significantly compared with uninfected groups indicating that LOC152742 may potentially act as a novel biomarker for diagnosis and therapy of active tuberculosis.