Gazouli Maria
School of Medicine, University of Athens, Michalakopoulou 176, 11527, Athens, Greece.
Exp Suppl. 2015;106:197-214. doi: 10.1007/978-3-0348-0955-9_9.
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are chronic, idiopathic, polygenic diseases with significant genetic heterogeneity. The two major types of IBD are Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UlC). It is well known that chronic intestinal inflammation results from the interplay of genetic, immunologic, and environmental factors, so the failure to properly downregulate nonspecific inflammation started by an environmental trigger may lead to the development of IBD. Recent studies indicate several microRNAs (miRNAs) as regulators of important pathways of the immune response and immune cell development, which are crucial to the pathogenesis of a variety of inflammatory diseases, including IBD. Additionally, miRNAs are shown to be crucial regulators of intestinal epithelial barrier function, colonic epithelial cell-derived chemokine expression, and autophagy mechanisms. About 100 miRNAs have been indicated to exhibit altered expression in tissues and blood for UlC and CD, when compared to healthy normal controls. Taking into consideration that to date the diagnosis and follow-up of IBD are performed by invasive colonoscopy, it is well suggested that circulating microRNAs might be promising noninvasive biomarkers for IBD. Therefore, recent studies have focused on comparing miRNAs expression profile in tissue to miRNAs profile in blood, in order to introduce the analysis of circulating microRNAs in the future clinical practice. In this chapter, the role of microRNAs in IBD and the most promising circulating microRNAs will be discussed that could be used as noninvasive biomarkers for IBD diagnosis.
炎症性肠病（IBD）是具有显著遗传异质性的慢性、特发性、多基因疾病。IBD的两种主要类型是克罗恩病（CD）和溃疡性结肠炎（UlC）。众所周知，慢性肠道炎症是由遗传、免疫和环境因素相互作用引起的，因此未能适当下调由环境触发因素引发的非特异性炎症可能导致IBD的发生。最近的研究表明，几种微小RNA（miRNA）是免疫反应和免疫细胞发育重要途径的调节因子，这对包括IBD在内的多种炎症性疾病的发病机制至关重要。此外，miRNA被证明是肠上皮屏障功能、结肠上皮细胞衍生趋化因子表达和自噬机制的关键调节因子。与健康正常对照相比，已表明约100种miRNA在UlC和CD的组织和血液中表达发生改变。考虑到迄今为止IBD的诊断和随访是通过侵入性结肠镜检查进行的，很有理由认为循环miRNA可能是IBD有前景的非侵入性生物标志物。因此，最近的研究集中于比较组织中的miRNA表达谱与血液中的miRNA谱，以便在未来临床实践中引入循环miRNA分析。在本章中，将讨论miRNA在IBD中的作用以及最有前景的循环miRNA，它们可作为IBD诊断的非侵入性生物标志物。
