Journal of IiMER Volume 10 Issue 1 IIMEC11 June 2016 PRESENTERS the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid (Spain). From https://publons.com/author/361418/elisa-oltra#profile ABSTRACT: Molecular Biomarkers of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Elisa Oltra, Jaime Cuquerella, Armando V. Mena-Durán, Vicente Monsalve and Germán Cerdá-Olmedo School of Medicine, Catholic University of Valencia (Spain) Summary At present no objective diagnostic method for ME or related diseases exists. A lack of reliable markers not only leads to misdiagnosis but limits the possibility of finding effective treatments and/or preventive actions as well. MicroRNAs, also called miRNAs or miRs, are a set of small molecules that work as important modulators of gene expression in tissue-specific physiologic pathways, in response to environmental cues and in disease. Their high stability in body fluids has already shown the use of these small nucleic acids in the diagnosis and prognosis of certain type of cancers and other diseases, appearing as attractive biomarker candidates for the development of precision medicine programs. Encouraged by the idea that miR profiling must be altered in ME patients and related diseases, we and other researchers have pursued the analysis of miRs in blood and other body fluids finding alterations that need to be understood. In our initial study, we performed a genome-wide expression profiling of these miRs in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs) of patients with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia comorbidities (N=11) and population-age-matched controls (N=10) using human v16-miRbase 3D-Gene microarrays (Toray Industries, Japan). This analysis led to the identification of a miRNA signature of 5 of these small nucleic acids that showed marked down-regulation (6-fold or higher). In addition, the low levels of the hsa-miR223-3p, hsa-miR451a, hsa-miR338-3p, hsa-miR143-3p and hsa-miR1455p could be validated by real-time quantitative PCR amplification (qPCR), an alternative method for measuring the expression levels of these molecules. At present, we are extending this study to a larger cohort of participants presenting a more varied symptom profiling than those that participated in our pilot study with the aim of unveiling symptom and symptom-severity-associated miR profiles. We are including additional body fluids and sub-fractions in our analysis to determine the most appropriate sample to use for a liquid biopsy-based diagnostic method of ME and related diseases. Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) www.investinme.org Page 71 of 77
72 Publizr Home