Peripheral Blood miR-937 May Serve as a Biomarker for Metabolic Disorders by Targeting AMPKα

The current study mainly evaluated whether peripheral blood miR-937 could be a biomarker to differentiate patients with metabolic disorders and healthy controls.

The peripheral blood was collected with patients with hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia and healthy control. The relative peripheral blood miR-937 level in patients with metabolic disorders and healthy individuals were evaluated by real-time PCR. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis and Spearman's correlation coefficient were applied to evaluate whether miR-937 could be a potential biomarker for metabolic disorders. Dual luciferase reporter assay was performed to identify the possible target genes of miR-937.

First, miR-937 was significantly increased (8.02 ± 8.27) in the peripheral blood of hyperglycemia patients. The level of miR-937 of patients with hyperlipidemia (13.7 ± 14.72) was also enhanced obviously compared with healthy controls (1 ± 1.35). ROC analysis showed that the peripheral blood levels of miR-937 could screen patients with hyperglycemia or hyperlipidemia from healthy controls. Furthermore, peripheral blood miR-937 level posi-tively correlated with serum glucose level (r = 0.556, p < 0.01) as well as total serum TG/TC levels (r = 0.455, p < 0.01). Dual luciferase reporter assay indicated that miR-937 suppressed the relative luciferase activity of pmir-GLO-AMPKα-3'UTR.

The upregulation of circulating miR-937 level may cause a metabolism disorder by suppressing the expression of AMPKα. miR-937 could be a potential biomarker to differentiate patients with metabolism syndrome from healthy controls.