Evaluation of miRNA-106a and ADARB1 in Autistic Children

Abstract

utism spectrum disorder (ASD) refers to a group of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impairments in communication and language as well as stereotypic patterns of behavior. The prevalence of ASD have been reported to be increased worldwide over the last few years. The world Health Organization estimated the prevalence of ASD in children to be 1 in 160 worldwide. Therefore, there is an urgent need to discover potential predictive biomarkers that could index for ASD before symptoms started and enrolling them in early intervention services for better outcomes. Several miRNAs were found to be deregulated in brain, serum and blood of ASD patients. Implicating the role of epigenetics in pathogenesis of autism. Among these deregulated miRNAs, miR-106a has been found to be differentially expressed in postmortem cerebellar cortex of patients with ASD compared to non ASD ones. Based on bioinformatics analysis, the current work has been designed to study the expression of miR-106a and ADARB1 mRNA as a novel circulating biomarkers that might improve the specificity of ASD diagnosis.