Micrornas hsa-mir-34a and hsa-mir-124 as biomarkers for predicting and monitoring the lithium treatment in bipolar disorder: In silico analysis

Abstract

Lithium is known to be efficient in treatment for mental disorders in people with bipolar disorder. The aim of the study was to identify bipolar disorder-specific microRNAs (miRNAs) that are associated with genes targeted by lithium treatment and lead to variance in the clinical response. miRNAs which are experimentally validated and shown to have differential expression pattern in bipolar disorder were selected from online public databases miRTarbase and HMDD v3.2. Target prediction was carried out for each miRNA, and experimentally validated miRNA-target mRNA pairs were obtained and analyzed by miRTarbase, HMDD v3.2, TargetScan, and DIANA databases. miRNA-target genes that are associated with lithium was determined by the use of DrugBank. According to the in silico analysis, it has been found that IMPA1 gene was targeted by hsa-mir-34a and GRIA3 gene was targeted by hsa-mir-124. The present study demonstrated that IMPA1, GRIA3, hsa-mir-34a, hsa-mir-124 may have the potential to be used as molecular biomarkers for estimating and monitoring the response to lithium treatment in bipolar disorder. © 2021 Orcun Avsar.