Expression of Mir-21 and Mir-103a in Toxocara canis: Potentialfor Diagnosis of Human Toxocariasis

Background: toxocariasis is one of the most neglected zoonotic diseases, predominantlycaused by toxocara canis. we aimed to evaluate the expression of micrornas 21and 103a in seropositive individuals for human toxocariasis as diagnostic biomarkers.methods: this study was conducted on 324 individuals for elisa test on toxocariasisin tehran and karaj, iran 2019. then positive samples for anti-toxocara igg wereobtained to quantitative real-time pcr (qrt-pcr) assays to investigate the transcriptionalprofiles of mirnas predicted to be involved in developmental and reproductiveprocesses. qpcr was employed to assess levels of transcription for mirnas of 103aand 21 in plasma samples.results: after the experiments, the results were evaluated by rest software, livakformula and quantitative t-test. the analyzes performed on human samples showedthat in the case group compared to the control group, only in tc-mir-21 gene, a 0.3-fold increase in expression was obtained with rest software (fold change ≤ 1.5,p>0.05), which was statistically significant by t-test (p<0. conclusion: to our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate mir-21 and mir- 103a in toxocariasis, which shed light on the fundamental role of it as a biomarker and diagnostic tool. however, due to the changes in expression of these mirnas were not vast to be used as biomarkers in diagnosis. despite of that the changes in the expression of these mirnas were not vast but they could serve as novel promising biomarkersfor diagnosis of toxocariasis.