MiRNA-183 cluster in response to asthma treatment

Asthma is a disease affecting millions of people with high economic burden, because of many variations in clinical presentation and response to treatment. MiRNAs modulate gene expression in response to various stimuli and their role in all aspects of asthma remains to be fully elucidated. We investigated the changes in miRNA expression in human bronchial epithelial cell line (BEAS-2B) in response to montelukast (MNT), widely used as asthma therapy. As bronchial epithelial cells contribute to innate immunity, we have also chosen to analyze changes in miRNA expression in response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation with or without pre-treatment with MNT. Total RNA was extracted and analyzed by Taqman Low Density miRNA array. The obtained results were normalized to RNU44 and statistically evaluated. We present the results on expression of mir-183 cluster (miR-183, -96 and -182). The members of this cluster have been implicated in processes important for lung function, such as response to high CO 2 concentrations and development of lung cancer. The expression of miR-183 was significantly elevated after treatment of BEAS-2B cells with LPS (2 -ddCt =5.8), but its expression decreased when the cells were pre-treated with MNT (2 -ddCt =3.1). When the cells were treated with MNT alone there was a significant down-regulation (2 -ddCt = 0.64) in miR-183 expression compared to control. MiR-182 expression was increased in comparison to control in MNT treated (2 -ddCt =3.9) and pre-treated (2 -ddCt =1.7) cells, but was down-regulated after stimulation with LPS (2 -ddCt =0.65). MiR-96 was not detected. The role of miRNAs needs further investigation in both asthma pathology and response to therapy and miR-183 cluster could have some clinical significance.