An Ebola virus-encoded microRNA-like fragment serves as a biomarker for early diagnosis of Ebola virus disease

• 来源期刊: 细胞研究（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2016,（3）
• 页码范围: 380-383
• 页数: 4页
• 语种: 中文
• DOI: 10.1038/cr.2016.21

摘要

Dear Editor, Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a severe infectious disease caused by Ebola virus (EBOV) species [1, 2].EBOV caused an epidemic in West Africa in 2013-2015 [1, 2].Early diagnosis of EVD is not only essential for implementation of effective interventions but also critical for prevention of the spread of infection, especially in regions with fragile and underfunded health system [2].However, diagnosing EVD at an early stage is difficult, because EBOV causes symptoms observed in many other infections, including malaria, typhoid fever and influenza [3], and some patients even develop illness without specific signs or symptoms.Current diagnostic methods to detect viral RNA or antigen in suspected patients are only effective at the late stage of illness.Lack of early biomarkers has led to diagnostic delays in current massive EVD outbreak [4] and international spread of EBOV [5, 6].Recent studies by us and others have demonstrated that microRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small non-coding RNAs produced by eukaryotic cells and viruses, are present in human blood and other body fluids in highly stable, cell-free forms [7, 8].Circulating miRNAs can serve as non-in-vasive biomarkers for the early diagnosis of various diseases, including viral diseases [7-10].Because EBOV is a negative-sense RNA virus, whether EBOV can produce miRNAs or miRNA-like RNA fragments remains unknown.In this study, we predicted and tested putative miRNA-like fragments generated by EBOV in the serum of EVD patients.