Forensic Context

A study in humans demonstrated that the mir-497 shows higher relative expression in menstrual blood than in peripheral blood, making it useful for distinguishing these two forensically relevant body fluids [Li et al. DOI:10.1007/s00414-021-02678-w]. In a separate human postmortem study, the mir-497 was found to be significantly decreased (0.724 of control, p=0.0395) in the prefrontal cortex of depressed suicide subjects, indicating its involvement in the altered miRNA network associated with this condition [Smalheiser et al. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0033201]. A review of human postmortem brain studies found that the mir-497 is upregulated in exosomes from Brodmann area 9 in subjects with schizophrenia and downregulated in Brodmann area 9 in subjects with major depressive disorder who died by suicide [Yoshino & Dwivedi DOI:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.543893].