Expression Analysis of Cellular Mir-29a and mir-29b in HIV Positive Patients

Abstract        Background and Objective: Various cellular factors affect the process of HIV activity. One of these cellular factors are structures known as microRN that are expected to be involved in controlling HIV replication and infectivity. The expression of one or a set of them may represent the patient's clinical conditions. In this study,  the expression of miR-29a and miR-29b involved in regulating viral genes’ expression was evaluated in three HIV-positive groups and a healthy control group. Later,  the expression level of these microRNAs  was compared between the cases and controls.       Methods: Total RNA extraction was performed on the collected samples using RNx-plus kit and then the microRNA expression levels were evaluated using Relative Real-time PCR. The obtained data was entered into SPSS 22 and Graphpad softwares and analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis and Man-Whitney tests. P-value of less than 0.05 was considered as statistical significance level.      Results: The expression level of miR-29a  was reduced in patients under treatment and drug-resistant patients ( P ≤ 0.05)  . All three HIV-positive groups including people without drug treatment, patients under treatment and drug-resistant patients showed reduced miR-29b expression level compared to  control group (P ≤ 0.05).      Conclusion: the decreased expression of miR-29a and miR-29b in patients under treatment and drug-resistant patients indicates an  increased viral replication and reduced CD4 cell count. It may be possible to predict the progression of the disease by miRNA measurement or control viral replication using these mir-RNAs that requires further studies.         Keywords: HIV, expression, mir-29a, mir-29b.