Forensic Context

A study in human plasma from young acute coronary syndrome patients identified the mir-320a as down-regulated in STEMI patients via small RNA sequencing and used it as a reference miRNA for qRT-PCR normalization [Tong et al. DOI:10.3390/ijms19051467]. A study in humans demonstrated that the mir-320a is significantly upregulated in the plasma of heroin-dependent patients compared to healthy controls, with an AUC of 0.748, sensitivity of 71.9%, and specificity of 76.1% for diagnosing heroin use disorder [Liu et al. DOI:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.679206]. In a separate forensic investigation, the mir-320a was validated as the most stable endogenous reference gene for miRNA expression analysis across five forensically relevant body fluids (peripheral blood, menstrual blood, saliva, semen, and vaginal secretions) and in degraded samples, with its combination with RNU6b providing the most stable normalization effect for body fluid identification [Wei et al. DOI:10.1016/j.fsigen.2023.102827].