Increases of microRNA let-7e in peripheral blood mononuclear cells in Hashimoto's disease.

MicroRNA (miRNA) is a family of non-coding RNAs that have important roles in various vital functions. It has been reported that let-7e, a miRNA, may be involved in the regulation of interleukin (IL)-10 production. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of let-7e as a regulator of IL-10 production in the pathological processes of autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITDs). We evaluated the association between let-7e expression and intracellular expression of IL-10 in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) collected from 11 healthy volunteers. Then we investigated the expression levels of let-7e in the PBMCs of 50 patients with Graves' disease (GD), 42 patients with Hashimoto's disease (HD) and 28 healthy controls. We found negative correlations between the expression level of let-7e and IL-10 messengerRNA (mRNA) and between the expression level of let-7e and proportion of IL-10(+) cells in stimulated PBMCs from healthy volunteers (r = -0.44, p = 0.0267 and r = -0.49, p = 0.0166, respectively). The expression levels of let-7e were significantly increased in HD patients compared with those in GD patients and healthy volunteers (p = 0.0003 and p = 0.0011, respectively). let-7e may be associated with the pathogenesis of HD through the regulation of intracellular IL-10 expression.