Comprehensive blood miRNA analysis for mild cognitive impairment biomarker

Mitsunori Kayano¹⁾, Sayuri Higaki²⁾, Jun-ichi Satoh³⁾, Shumpei Niida²⁾,
Kenji Matsumoto⁴⁾, Etsuro Matsubara⁵⁾, Osamu Takikawa⁶⁾

¹⁾Global Agro-Medicine Research Center, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine
²⁾BioBank Omics Units, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology
³⁾Department of Bioinfomatics and Molecular Neuropathology, Meiji Pharmaceutical University
⁴⁾Department of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, National Center for Child Health and Development
⁵⁾Department of Neurology, Oita University Faculty of Medicine
⁶⁾Division of Neurological, Psychiatric and Brain Research, Department of Research Promotion, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development

Mild cognitive impairment is an intermediate state between normal aging, and Alzheimer's disease, and other dementia. Early detection of dementia, and mild cognitive impairment, is a crucial issue in terms of prevention. Blood biomarker is a possible way for early detection of mild cognitive impairment. Although disease biomarkers are detected by, in general, using single marker analysis such as t-test, another possible approach is based on interaction between mrkers. In this study, differential correlation analysis, which detects difference on correlation in case/control study, was carried out to the data set with 85 miRNAs from plasma samples of 30 age-matched controls and 23 mild cognitive impairment patients. The top five miRNAs which showed a large difference in correlation between mild cognitive impairment patients and controls, attained a high AUC value of 0.903 for MCI detection through a ROC analysis.

Address correspondence to Dr. Osamu Takikawa, Division of Neurological, Psychiatric and Brain Research, Department of Research Promotion, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (22F Yomiuri Shimbun Bldg, 1-7-1 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0004, Japan)