The Impact of microRNA Regulation on Immune Recovery in HIV-1-Infected Patients Treated during Acute Infection: A Pilot Study

Abstract

microRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs involved in a large range of cellular activities and can be used as biomarkers and indicators for diagnosis. We investigated the alterations in miRNA profiles in immune reconstituted vs. nonimmune reconstituted HIV-1-infected individuals to assess the association between miRNAs and the occurrence of immunological nonresponses, with the aim of searching for miRNA-based biomarkers for these HIV-1-infected individuals. Thirteen immunological responders (IRs) and 12 immunological nonresponders (INRs) were recruited, and RNA was collected from the plasma samples of the 25 HIV-1-infected individuals at both baseline and after 24 months of maintaining virological suppression (VS). Next-generation sequencing was used to detect miRNAs and evaluate the expression differences in miRNAs between IR and INR patients and between baseline and after 24 months of maintaining VS. Samples from 13 IRs and 11 INRs were successfully sequenced. The horizontal comparison of differentially expressed miRNAs between the groups and the longitudinal comparison of differentially expressed miRNAs between baseline and after 24 months of maintaining VS showed that a large proportion of miRNAs in INRs are downregulated compared to the levels in IRs. We also found that the miRNA let-7d-5p was downregulated in 9 INRs but only in 2 IRs by more than 2-fold. The difference was significant. In summary, these results demonstrate for the first time that a large proportion of miRNAs are downregulated in INRs compared with IRs, and the miRNA let-7d-5p is a potential biomarker for INRs.