An Ebola virus-encoded microRNA-like fragment serves as a biomarker for early diagnosis of Ebola virus disease
Dear Editor,Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a severe infectious disease caused by Ebola virus (EBOV) species ”1, 2”.EBOV caused an epidemic in West Africa in 2013-2015 ”1, 2”.Early diagnosis of EVD is not only essential for implementation of effective interventions but also critical for prevention of the spread of infection, especially in regions with fragile and underfunded health system ”2”.However, diagnosing EVD at an early stage is difficult, because EBOV causes symptoms observed in many other infections, including malaria, typhoid fever and influenza ”3”, and some patients even develop illness without specific signs or symptoms.Current diagnostic methods to detect viral RNA or antigen in suspected patients are only effective at the late stage of illness.Lack of early biomarkers has led to diagnostic delays in current massive EVD outbreak ”4” and international spread of EBOV ”5, 6”.Recent studies by us and others have demonstrated that microRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small non-coding RNAs produced by eukaryotic cells and viruses, are present in human blood and other body fluids in highly stable, cell-free forms ”7, 8”.Circulating miRNAs can serve as non-in-vasive biomarkers for the early diagnosis of various diseases, including viral diseases ”7-10”.Because EBOV is a negative-sense RNA virus, whether EBOV can produce miRNAs or miRNA-like RNA fragments remains unknown.In this study, we predicted and tested putative miRNA-like fragments generated by EBOV in the serum of EVD patients.
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This work was supported by grants from the National Basic Research Program of China 973 Program;2014CB542300, the Chinese Science and Technology Major Project of China 2015ZX09102023-003, the Research Special Fund for Public Welfare Industry of Health 201302018, the National Natural Science Foundation of China 81550001, the National Key Program for Infectious Diseases of China 013ZX10004-203and 2013ZX10004805-006.
2016-05-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）
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