Genetic variants in miR-145 gene are associated with the risk of asthma in Taiwan

Asthma is a chronic airway inflammation disease and the diagnosis and treatment strategies remain difficult. MicroRNAs play important roles in many biological and pathological processes including asthma development. There is no study confirming the contribution of genetic variants in miR-145 to asthma etiology. We hypothesize that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the promoter region of miR-145 may be associated with the risk of asthma in Taiwanese. We used a case–control study to test this hypothesis. In 198 asthma patients and 453 healthy controls, the genotypes of miR-145 rs4705342 and rs4705343 were determined, and the associations of miR-145 genotypes with asthma risk and severity were evaluated. The distribution of miR-145 rs4705342 genotypes between asthma patients and non-asthmatic control groups were significantly different (p = 0.0187). In multivariable logistic regression analysis, compared with the wild-type TT genotype, individuals carrying the variant genotypes had progressively decreased risks of asthma: the odds ratio (OR) for the heterogeneous variant genotype (CT) and homozygous variant genotype (CC) was 0.77 (95% CI 0.55–1.10, p = 0.1788) and 0.41 (95% CI 0.21–0.79, p = 0.0102), respectively (p for trend = 0.0187). In allelic test, the C allele was associated with a 31% reduced risk of asthma (OR = 0.69, 95% CI 0.53–0.90, p = 0.0070). In addition, the rs4705342 variant genotypes were correlated with the symptom severity (p = 3 × 10^–5). Furthermore, the variant genotypes correlated with lower miR-145-5p expression level in serum (p = 0.0001). As for rs4705343, there was no differential distribution of genotypes between cases and controls. Our data provide evidence for miR-145 rs4705342 to serve as a novel biomarker for asthma risk prediction.