Abstract
Recently, circulating microRNAs have attracted much attention because they can serve as reliable non-invasive diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for pregnancy-related complications. So, this study aimed to quantify miR-23a-3p, miR-101-3p and miR-let-7c expression levels in plasma of patients with idiopathic recurrent pregnancy loss (iRPL) and healthy subjects and to evaluate their potential diagnostic value in iRPL patients. A total of 120 plasma samples were obtained from sixty women with a history of at least two consecutive iRPL and sixty healthy women without a history of miscarriage to evaluate the expression levels of the circulating miR-23a-3p, miR-101-3p and miR-let-7c by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) technique. The correlation between studied miRNAs and clinicopathological parameters was also assessed. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was plotted to determine the diagnostic accuracy of miR-23a-3p, miR-101-3p and miR-let-7c in iRPL. Our results showed that the miR-23a-3p expression level in plasma of iRPL patients was lower than those in healthy controls but without a statistically significant difference (P = 0.113). The expression levels of miR-101-3p and miR-let-7c were significantly downregulated in iRPL patients compared with healthy subjects (P < 0.05). The expression levels of miR-23a-3p and miR-let-7c was negatively correlated with number of abortions in iRPL patients. We observed statistically significant positive correlation between miR-23a-3p and miR-101-3p (r = 0.478, P = 0.001), miR-23a-3p and miR-let-7c (r = 0.561, P = 0.0001), miR-101-3p and miR-let-7c (r = 0.533, P = 0.0001) in patients with iRPL. The current study provides evidence indicating that downregulation of miR-23a-3p, miR-101-3p and miR-let-7c may be associated with iRPL.
