MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play critical regulatory roles in the physiological and pathological processes. The high stability of miRNAs in human serum represents attractive novel diagnostic biomarkers of clinical conditions. Several studies have shown that aberrant expression of miRNAs in human cancer including lung cancer, but little is known about their effects on some infectious lung diseases such as pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) and pneumonia. In this study, we investigated miRNA expression pattern in serum of Egyptian patients with lung cancer, TB, and pneumonia compared with matched healthy controls. Using microarray-based expression profiling followed by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction validation, we compared the levels of a series of circulating miRNAs (miR-21, miR-155, miR-182, and miR-197) in serum from patients with lung cancer (n = 65), pulmonary tuberculosis (n = 29), pneumonia (n = 29), and transudate (n = 16) compared with matched healthy controls (n = 37). MiRNA SNORD68 was the housekeeping endogenous control. We found that the serum levels of miR-21, miR-155, and miR-197 were significantly elevated in the patients with lung cancer and pneumonia whereas miR-182 and miR-197 levels were increased only in patients with lung cancer and TB, respectively, compared with controls. Receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed that miR-182, miR-155, and miR-197 have superior diagnostic potential in discriminating patients with lung cancer, pneumonia, and TB, respectively, from controls. Our results conclude that the differential expression of the four studied miRNAs can be potential non-invasive biomarkers for patients with lung cancer, TB and pneumonia. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.
