Preliminary Study On The Role Of Plasma Exosomal MiRNAs In The Assessment Of Vitiligo Stages

Objective To study the differential expression of plasma exosomal miRNAs in patients with progressive and stable vitiligo,and to explore the role of plasma exosomal miRNAs in the assessment of vitiligo stages.Methods From January 2021 to August 2021,10 patients with progressive vitiligo,10 patients with stable vitiligo and 10 healthy subjects who were diagnosed and treated in Hangzhou Third Hospital Affiliated to Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine were collected,and 20ml blood samples were collected from each case.Plasma/Serum Exosome Purification Kits were used to extract plasma exosomes,and Exosomal RNA Isolation Kit was used to extract exosomal smRNA,and Illumina Hiseq2500 was used for high-throughput sequencing.Differential screening,target gene prediction,GO and KEGG functional enrichment analysis were performed on the sequencing results of plasma exosomal miRNAs.The specific methods included:the target genes of exosomal miRNAs were compared with miRNA target gene prediction databases（miRDB,miRTarBase and TargetScan）.prediction was obtained;the diagnostic efficacy of plasma exosomal miRNAs was evaluated by drawing receiver operating characteristic（ROC）curves;Cytoscape software was used to assist in the visualization of co-expression networks.The plasma exosomal miRNAs closely related to the clinical stage of vitiligo were initially screened by bioinformatics methods.Results Compared with the healthy control group,there were significant differences in the expression of 141 miRNAs in the plasma exosomes of patients with progressive vitiligo,and 365 miRNAs in patients with stable vitiligo（P<0.05）.Among them,the expression of hsa-miR-487b-3p was significantly lower in patients with progressive vitiligo（P<0.05）,while the expression of hsa-miR-487b-3p in patients with stable vitiligo was not significantly different from that in healthy controls.Based on ROC curve analysis（AUC=0.840）,hsa-miR-487b-3p expression may have high diagnostic value in the judgment of the progressive and stable stages of vitiligo.Further analysis of the results showed that the expression of hsa-miR-487b-3p was also positively correlated with the body surface area（BSA）of vitiligo.According to the prediction of the bioinformatics database,there are 41 target genes of hsa-miR-487b-3p.After KEGG analysis,it was found that they were mainly enriched in metabolic pathways such as phenylalanine metabolism,glycan degradation,and protein export.Conclusion There are differences in the expression of plasma exosomal miRNAs in progressive and stable vitiligo,suggesting that miRNAs in exosomes may be involved in the progression of vitiligo.Among them,hsa-miR-487b-3p might be the potential biological markers to assess progressive and stable vitiligo.