Together, our results showed that the inflammatory environment mimic TNF<i>-α</i> inhibits osteogenesis via upregulation of miR-146a and subsequent downregulation of Smad4, thus suggesting that therapeutic manipulation of miR-146a maybe a potential strategy to improve osteogenesis in the context of osteoporosis.
In our study, we detect the levels of three micro-RNAs (miRNAs; miR-21, miR-133a and miR-146a) in the plasma of 120 Chinese postmenopausal women who were divided into three groups (normal, osteopenia and osteoporosis) according to the T-scores.