Kappil Maya, Chen Jia
aDepartment of Preventive Medicine bDepartment of Pediatrics cDepartment of Oncological Sciences dDepartment of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.
Curr Opin Pediatr. 2014 Apr;26(2):243-51. doi: 10.1097/MOP.0000000000000073.
Understanding the effects of in-utero exposures to environmental agents is of great importance as the resulting deregulation of biological processes can affect both fetal development and health outcomes that manifest later in life. Due to their established role in developmental processes and inherent stability ex vivo, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as attractive candidates to explore the impact of such exposures during this critical window of susceptibility. In this review, we summarize the findings of studies assessing miRNAs as markers of in-utero environmental exposures and as candidates for the molecular basis through which these exposures exert their influence on children's health.
To date, miRNA expression profiles due to various in-utero environmental exposures, including xenochemicals, endogenous factors, and nutritional status, have been reported.
While the validity of the identified exposure-specific miRNA profiles remains to be established, the findings thus far do raise interesting questions worth addressing in future studies. Gaps that remain to be addressed include linking specific in-utero exposures to subsequent health outcomes based on established miRNA expression profiles and experimentally validating putative downstream targets of the deregulated miRNAs.
了解子宫内暴露于环境因素的影响至关重要，因为由此导致的生物过程失调会影响胎儿发育以及生命后期出现的健康结果。由于微小RNA（miRNA）在发育过程中已确立的作用以及其在体外的固有稳定性，它们已成为在这个关键的易感性窗口期探索此类暴露影响的有吸引力的候选对象。在本综述中，我们总结了评估miRNA作为子宫内环境暴露标志物以及作为这些暴露对儿童健康产生影响的分子基础候选物的研究结果。
迄今为止，已经报道了由于各种子宫内环境暴露（包括外源性化学物质、内源性因素和营养状况）导致的miRNA表达谱。
虽然已确定的特定暴露miRNA谱的有效性仍有待确定，但迄今为止的研究结果确实提出了一些有趣的问题，值得在未来的研究中加以解决。仍有待解决的差距包括根据已确立的miRNA表达谱将特定的子宫内暴露与随后的健康结果联系起来，以及通过实验验证失调miRNA的假定下游靶点。
