MicroRNAs in Extracellular Vesicles of Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease with dysfunction of memory, language and thinking. More than 55 million people were diagnosed with AD or other dementia around the world in 2020. The pathology of AD is still unclear and there are no applicable therapies for AD. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play key roles in AD pathology and have great potential for the diagnosis and treatment of AD. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) widely exist in body fluids such as blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and contain miRNAs that are involved in cell-to-cell communication. We summarized the dysregulated miRNAs in EVs derived from the different body fluids of AD patients, as well as their potential function and application in AD. We also compared these dysregulated miRNAs in EVs to those in the brain tissues of AD patients aiming to provide a comprehensive view of miRNAs in AD. After careful comparisons, we found that miR-125b-5p and miR-132-3p were upregulated and downregulated in several different brain tissues of AD and EVs of AD, respectively, suggesting their value in AD diagnosis based on EV miRNAs. Furthermore, miR-9-5p was dysregulated in EVs and different brain tissues of AD patients and had also been tested as a potential therapy for AD in mice and human cell models, suggesting that miR-9-5p could be used to design new therapies for AD.