He Zhen, Hu Cheng, Jia Weiping
Shanghai Diabetes Institute, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Diabetes Mellitus, Shanghai Clinical Center for Diabetes, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People's Hospital, Shanghai, 200233, China.
Front Med. 2016 Dec;10(4):389-396. doi: 10.1007/s11684-016-0468-5. Epub 2016 Dec 23.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a major cause of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma and is a considerable threat to public health. miRNAs are important post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression, and the dysregulation of miRNAs is involved in various biological processes in the liver, including lipid homeostasis, inflammation, apoptosis, and cell proliferation. Recently, a number of studies have described the association between miRNAs and NAFLD progression and have shown that circulating miRNAs reflect histological changes in the liver. Therefore, circulating miRNAs have potential use for the evaluation of NAFLD severity. In this review, we discuss the involvement of miRNAs in NAFLD pathogenesis and the key role of miRNAs in the screening, diagnosis, and staging of NAFLD.
非酒精性脂肪性肝病（NAFLD）是肝硬化和肝细胞癌的主要病因，对公众健康构成重大威胁。微小RNA（miRNAs）是基因表达的重要转录后调节因子，miRNAs的失调参与肝脏的各种生物学过程，包括脂质稳态、炎症、细胞凋亡和细胞增殖。最近，多项研究描述了miRNAs与NAFLD进展之间的关联，并表明循环miRNAs反映了肝脏的组织学变化。因此，循环miRNAs在评估NAFLD严重程度方面具有潜在用途。在本综述中，我们讨论了miRNAs在NAFLD发病机制中的作用以及miRNAs在NAFLD筛查、诊断和分期中的关键作用。
