Predictive value of miR-24-3p and miR-1277-5p in hemodialysis patients with vascular access thrombosis

One of the complications of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is venous thromboembolism (VTE). Currently, the D-dimer test is used for the diagnosis of VTE. This test has low diagnostic value and specificity. Circulating microRNAs are present in plasma, serum, and other body fluids and have recently been shown to be valuable biomarkers in numerous illnesses. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic potential of serum microRNAs as noninvasive biomarkers for VTE diagnosis in hemodialysis patients. Serum samples were collected from 42 hemodialysis patients with thrombosis, 42 hemodialysis patients without thrombosis, and 42 healthy individuals. After the synthesis of cDNA from serum, the expression of miR-24-3P and miR-1277-5P was measured by qRT-PCR. The data were analyzed using SPSS 20 and GraphPad Prism7 software. The expression level of miR-24-3P in the thrombotic and nonthrombotic hemodialysis groups was significantly greater than that in the healthy groups after adjustment for hyperglycemia ( P  = 0.003, P  = 0.04). Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis revealed that the area under the curve (AUC) values were 0.769 and 0.649, respectively. However, in the thrombotic group compared with the nonthrombotic group after adjustment for hyperglycemia, no significant difference was detected ( P  = 0.063), and the AUC was 0.62. After adjustment for age, sex, and BMI, there was a significant difference between the thrombotic group and the nonthrombotic group ( P  = 0.002), and the AUC was 0.71. Compared with that in the control group, the odds ratio (OR) of increased miR-1277-5P expression was greater in the thrombotic group ( P  = 0.05, OR = 1.618). There was no significant difference between the nonthrombotic group and the control group ( P  = 0.73, OR = 0.914). Our results indicated that miR-24-3P is not a reliable marker for examining thrombosis in the studied samples, while miR-1277-5P has a positive association with VAT and could be considered a diagnostic and therapeutic marker.