Comment on "Altered Expression of Long Non-coding RNAs in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells of Patients with...

We read with great interest the article by Kurt and colleagues. The authors, using microarray in clinical samples, found altered expression of lncRNAs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The findings from this study may open a door to the understanding of AD pathogenesis targeted by lncRNAs. In our opinion, it is necessary to further clarify the data analysis strategy of this study. According to the authors' description, they seem to use unadjusted p values and fold change of expression values when defining significantly differentially expressed lncRNAs in PBMCs of subjects with probable AD and healthy control groups. However, due to the characteristics of lncRNA and high false positives caused by multiple comparisons, t-test is not suitable for high-level microarray analysis. It seems that a specialized high-level microarray analysis method is essential to reach a reliable result. Accurate analysis results will provide a convincing basis for subsequent experiments.