Although, overall, we did not identify a strong effect of AD GWAS variants on miRNA expression in this cell type, we highlight 2 notable outliers, that is, miR-29c-5p and miR-6840-5p.
Furthermore, Water maze test, which assesses the learning and memory deficits in rodents, showed that escape latency was significantly shorter in AD rats with overexpression of miR-29c-3p or miR-19b-3p than in control AD rats.
Correlation analysis revealed that the expression of miR-29c was negatively correlated with the protein expression of BACE1 in the peripheral blood samples from patients with AD.
Present study indicated that miR-29c was downregulated in sporadic AD brains, and it targeted the 3' UTR of BACE1, reduced the BACE1 expression, and downregulated the APPβ accumulation in vitro.
A marked decrease in the expression of miR-29c was observed in the AD group compared with the normal control group, accompanied by a decreased in the expression of BDNF.