Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305-5236, USA.
Curr Opin Allergy Clin Immunol. 2012 Feb;12(1):49-52. doi: 10.1097/ACI.0b013e32834ecb7f.
Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory airway disorder that is characterized by variable and recurring airflow obstruction, chronic airway inflammation and bronchial hyper-responsiveness. The etiopathogenesis of asthma remains a complex issue. The intricacy in developing a more effective therapeutic strategy may be due to a large diversity in causative agents and a lack of understanding of the precise molecular mechanism involved in asthma. However, recent identification of microRNAs (miRs) has enhanced technological abilities to understand the disease process.
miRs regulate gene expression by controlling the translation of a specific type of messenger RNA. miRs have been recently identified as key regulatory RNAs with immense significance in numerous biological processes including asthma. miRs have been implicated to have a fundamental role in acute and chronic asthma and in airway remodeling by the regulation of multiple signal transduction pathways that are involved in the pathogenesis of asthma. It is possible that miRs may bring a fundamental change to our understanding of the pathophysiology of asthma. This may then lead to the development of novel efficacious therapeutic strategies in asthma.
In this review, we highlight the current understanding of the role and regulation of miRs in asthma.
哮喘是一种常见的慢性炎症性气道疾病，其特征是气流阻塞的可变性和复发性、慢性气道炎症和支气管高反应性。哮喘的病因仍然是一个复杂的问题。开发更有效的治疗策略的复杂性可能是由于致病因素的多样性以及对哮喘涉及的精确分子机制缺乏了解。然而，最近发现的 microRNAs（miRs）增强了理解疾病过程的技术能力。
miRs 通过控制特定类型的信使 RNA 的翻译来调节基因表达。miRs 最近被确定为关键调节 RNA，在包括哮喘在内的许多生物学过程中具有重要意义。miRs 通过调节参与哮喘发病机制的多个信号转导途径，被认为在急性和慢性哮喘以及气道重塑中发挥着基本作用。miRs 可能会给我们对哮喘病理生理学的理解带来根本性的改变。这可能会导致哮喘治疗新策略的开发。
在这篇综述中，我们强调了目前对 miRs 在哮喘中的作用和调节的理解。
