Differential expression of miR-143-3p is associated with disease activity in the peripheral blood CD4+T cells of RA patients
To explore whether miR-143-3p participated in the pathogenesis of RA, the levels of miR-143-3p in the CD4+T cells from PBMCs of RA patients and HCs were analyzed by qPCR. As miR-143-3p has been reported to show different expression in different individuals with RA[17,27,28], we speculate whether the difference of disease severity or not affected the expression of miR-143-3p. Hence, patients were classified according to Disease Activity Score-28 (DAS28). 18 patients had severe disease activity (DAS28>5.1), 13 patients had moderate disease activity (DAS28 3.2-5.1). The expression of miR-143-3p in peripheral blood CD4+T cells was significantly higher in patients with moderate RA than in HC, while levels of miR-143-3p were significantly lower in patients with severe RA in comparison with moderate RA (Figure 1D). Remarkably, based on Pearson’s correlation analysis, the expression of miR-143-3p was negatively correlated with the DAS28 (r=-0.5530; p=0.0006) and ESR (r =-0.3425, P=0.0296) (Figure 1E-F), which were considered as markers of disease activity in RA. These data showed that lower expression of miR-143-3p in peripheral blood CD4+T cells of RA patients have higher disease activity.