Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MIRAGE (MicroRNAs as therapeutic targets for ARVC.)
Período documentado: 2015-08-01 hasta 2017-07-31
As remarkably stable molecules in body fluids, like the bloodstream, circulating miRNAs have the potential of being used as biomarkers for several pathophysiological conditions, including ARVC. Accordingly, in collaboration with Prof. T. Thum from Hannover, we investigated the value of circulating miRNAs as diagnostic biomarkers in a clinical cohort of ARVC patients. These results will be compared with data obtained from studies in cohorts of patients affected with other cardiovascular diseases and will help in supporting the complex ARVC diagnosis, patient stratification and treatment monitoring.
The obtained results have already been presented at both scientific and non scientific national and international meetings, and will be further disseminated in the very next future with the progression of the study, thus reaching a significant number of users working in different sectors as well as a broader public.
Another aspect regards the diagnosis of ARVC, which is still difficult to perform. Therefore, there is a great need to develop novel diagnostic tools for the stratification and monitoring of ARVC patients. The identification of circulating miRNAs as non-invasive diagnostic biomarkers in clinical cohorts of ARVC has the potential to improve the diagnostic criteria increasing their specificity and sensitivity, especially in detecting early disease or identifying affected relatives of probands, thus reducing the incidence of early mortality. Taken together, our results have the potential to improve life expectancy and quality of life and by achieving an improvement of treatment outcomes and a reduced need for complex interventions (e.g. heart transplantation) will lead to a marked decrease in healthcare costs and improve the healthcare systems sustainability.