Serum Levels of Mir-Let7a in Hepatitis C

Background and aim: hepatitis c virus (hcv) is a positive-sense single-stranded rna virus which is the major cause of acute liver disease. it has been discovered that mir-let7a works as a restriction factor for different stages of hcv life cycle and its altered expression levels have been observed in some stages of hepatitis c but it has not been evaluated in iranian population. therefore, we evaluated the serum levels of mir-let7a in iranian hcv infected patients compared to healthy ones.methods: in this study, 97 serum samples of hcv infected patients as a case group and 97 serum samples of healthy subjects as a control group were used. after total rna extraction and cdna synthesis, real-time pcr was performed. the results were statistically analyzed with rest 2009 (v2.0.13) to evaluate serum levels of mir-let7a in the case group compared to the control group.results: the serum levels of mir-let7a had a significant decrease (fold change = 0.097) in hcv infected patients compared to the control group (p-value < 0.001).conclusion: since the serum levels of mir-let7a in hcv infected patients showed a decrease compared to the healthy subjects, more studies are valuable to uncover possible roles of mir-let7a in different stages of hepatitis c.