To investigate the expression levels of hsa-miR-181a-5p and hsa-miR-141-3p in the circulating blood of Tibetan patients with tuberculosis in the active stage and latent infection stage and healthy volunteers in order to determine the role of their differential expression in diagnosis of tuberculosis in Tibetans.

The blood samples were collected respectively from Tibetan tuberculosis patients in Qinghai province during the active period and the latent period and the healthy volunteers from physical examinations at the same time. After miRNA was extracted from each group, human miFinder miscript miRNA PCR chip and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) were used for detection and analysis, and miRNA expression was verified.

The results of gene chip detection found that FC=0.1874 and P=0.0001 for the hsa-mir-181a-5p in the tuberculosis patients in the active phase compared with the healthy volunteers, FC=0.2243 and P=0.0057 for the hsa-mir-181a-5p in the tuberculosis patients in the latent stage compared with the healthy volunteers, and FC=0.8844 and P=0.759224 for the hsa-mir-181a-5p in the tuberculosis patients in the active stage compared with that of the tuberculosis patients in the latent stage. The results of gene chip detection found that FC=0.1293 and P=0.0355 for the hsa-miR-141-3p in the tuberculosis group compared with the healthy control group, FC=0.3117 and P=0.17194 in the latent infection group compared with the healthy control group, and FC=2.4113 and P=0.958698 in the tuberculosis group compared with the latent infection group.

The testing results of gene chip in Qinghai Tibetan region in the active pulmonary tuberculosis and in the incubation period and the expression of miRNA in the circulating blood have significant differences compared with the healthy control group, including the lower expression levels of hsa-miR-181a-5p and hsa-miR-141-3p in the patients with mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. And the hsa-miR-181a-5p shows lower expression levels in the active and latent stages of pulmonary tuberculosis, but the hsa-miR-141-3p only shows low expression levels in the active stage of pulmonary tuberculosis patients. Therefore, the two kinds of miRNA as indices of tuberculosis diagnosing and staging are expected to be molecular markers for a specific expression of Tibetan tuberculosis patients in the plateau regions.