Background IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is a progressive disease with high incidence. The main diagnostic method is renal puncture biopsy. Non-invasive and specific diagnostic markers of IgAN need to be studied in clinical practice.
Objective To detect the expression level of miR-150-5p in urine sediment of IgAN patients and evaluate its value in the diagnosis of IgAN.
Methods According to the data of three published studies on IgAN urinary sediment miRNAs profiles, the commonnly and differentially expressed miRNA between IgAN and healthy people were screened. miR-150-5p was selected because its expression in urine sediment was significantly higher in the IgAN patients than that in the normal controls (30.22-598.34 fold-changes). In order to verify the accuracy of chip screening results, 30 IgAN patients and 30 normal controls in the First Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital from October 2018 to February 2019 were selected for RT-PCR verification. In order to further clarify whether it was disease-specific, 144 patients with IgAN, 84 patients with other nephropathy (60 patients with membranous nephropathy MN, 8 patients with minimal change disease MCD, 16 patients with focal segmental glomerular sclerosis FSGS) and 67 normal controls in the First Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital from March 2019 to May 2022 were selected for experimental verification with larger samples, and the differential expression of miRNA between IgAN and control groups with different diseases was compared. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve) was plotted to evaluate the value of miR-150-5p in non-invasive diagnosis of IgAN.
Results In the small sample validation study, RT-PCR assay showed that miR-150-5p in urine sediment of the IgAN patients was significantly higher than that of the normal controls (Md IQR: 25.632 5.868-61.523 vs 0.557 0.218-1.258, P<0.0001), which was consistent with the results of the profiles in the literature. In the larger sample study including disease control group, the expression level of miR-150-5p in the IgAN group was significantly higher than that in the disease control group (Md IQR: 12.606 3.939-34.431 vs 2.808 1.420-9.616, P<0.0001). The expression level of miR-150-5p in IgAN was higher than that in MN and FSGS (P <0.001), and there was no significant difference between IgAN and MCD (P=0.613). The area under the ROC curve (AUC) for the diagnosis of IgAN by miR-150-5p was 0.844 (95%CI: 0.804-0.885), the optimal cut-off value was 2.505, with the sensitivity of 71.51%, and the specificity of 84.48%.
Conclusion miR-150-5p may be a potential marker for non-invasive diagnosis of IgAN.
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