Sterile alpha motif and histidine-aspartic acid domain-containing protein 1 expression and its relationship with T cell activation in human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients with lung-spleen deficiency syndrome pattern.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between antiviral restriction factor Sterile Alpha Motif and Histidine-Aspartic acid domain-containing protein 1 (SAMHD1) expression and T cell activation, furthermore, identifying objective indexes of lung-spleen deficiency symptom pattern. METHODS: We assessed the profile of T lymphocyte subsets, characteristics of SAMHD1 and human leukocyte antigen DR (HLA-DR) expression in lung-spleen deficiency patients. At the same time, people living with human immunodeficiency virus / acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) (PLWHA) without obvious clinical symptoms and healthy donors in this area were used as controls. RESULTS: Immunohematologic indexes lower CD4 count, lower CD4/CD8 ratio and higher SAMHD1 level were found in lung-spleen deficiency patients. Furthermore, we demonstrated a positive relationship between SAMHD1 and HLA-DR level as well as with interferon factor in lung-spleen deficiency syndrome and patients without obvious clinical signs and symptoms groups. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicated the positive relationship between SAMHD1 and T cell activation which further elucidated the role of SAMHD1 in cellular immune response. Furthermore, combination of T lymphocyte subsets counts and SAMHD1 level may be used as clinical and biological reference basis for the differentiation and diagnosis of HIV / AIDS traditional Chinese medicine syndromes.

Circulating liver-specific miR-122 as a novel potential biomarker for diagnosis of cholestatic liver injury.

BACKGROUND: Circulating microRNA-122 (miR-122) has been increasingly reported to be a potential biomarker for drug-, viral-, alcohol- and chemical-induced liver injury. The present study was initiated to determine the potential of circulating miR-122 as a biomarker for cholestatic liver injury. METHODS: Both bile-duct ligation (BDL) mice and patients with biliary calculi were employed as cholestatic liver injury models, and serum miR-122 level was determined by stem-loop real-time reverse-transcription PCR (SLqRT-PCR). All quantitative PCR values were normalized to those for U6 RNA and calculated with the 2(-△Ct) method. RESULTS: Serum miR-122 increased significantly after BDL-induced cholestatic injury and showed a similar time course to ALT concentrations. Compared with the sham controls, BDL mice had increased serum levels of miR-122 by 24.36±12.86, 423.63±322.89, 4.43±2.02 and 12.23±8.92 folds after 1, 3, 7 and 14 days, respectively. Moreover, serum miR-122 level was substantially higher in patients with biliary calculi than that in the healthy control group. In addition, patients with severe liver injury showed significantly higher levels of serum miR-122 when compared with healthy controls or patients with mild or moderate liver injury. Furthermore, serum miR-122 was found to show significant diagnostic value for biliary calculi by yielding an AUC (the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve) of 0.931 with 77.4% sensitivity and 96.4% specificity in discriminating biliary calculi from healthy controls. CONCLUSION: Collectively, these data suggest that serum miR-122 has strong potential as a novel, specific and noninvasive biomarker for diagnosis of cholestasis-induced liver injury.