expression of microrna-155 in patients with non-hodgkin lymphoma, coronavirus disease 2019, or both: a cross-sectional study

Background: non-hodgkin lymphoma (nhl) is the eleventh leading cause of cancer-related death in the world. diffuse large b-cell lymphoma (dlbcl) is the most common type of nhl. up to winter 2021-2022, the death toll caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) has exceeded 5.6 million worldwide. possible molecular mechanisms involved in the systemic inflammation, and cytokine storm in covid-19 patients are still not fully understood. microrna-155 (mir-155) plays a role in the post-transcriptional gene regulation of hematopoiesis, oncogenesis, and inflammation. the present study aimed to evaluate the expression of mir-155 in patients with dlbcl and/or covid-19.methods: a cross-sectional study was conducted from july to december 2020 in tehran (iran) to evaluate the expression of mir-155 in adult patients diagnosed with dlbcl and/or covid-19. the real-time polymerase chain reaction technique was used to evaluate the expression of mir-155 in the sera of 92 adults who were either healthy or suffering from dlbcl and/or covid-19. relative quantification of gene expression was calculated in terms of cycle threshold (ct) value. data were analyzed using spss software, and p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. results: the expression of mir-155 was not associated with the sex or age of the participants. in comparison with healthy individuals (-δct: -1.92±0.25), the expression of mir-155 increased in patients with covid-19 (1.95±0.14), dlbcl (2.25±0.16), or both (4.33±0.65).conclusion: the expression of mir-155 increased in patients with dlbcl and/or covid-19.