Circulating miR-200-family micro-RNAs have altered plasma levels in patients with endometriosis and vary with blood collection time

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether circulating micro-RNA (miR) 200a, miR-200b, and miR-141 have altered levels in patients with endometriosis compared with control individuals. DESIGN: Experimental laboratory study. SETTING: University. PATIENT(S): Patients with endometriosis (n = 61), laparoscopically confirmed endometriosis-free women (n = 35), and self-reported healthy women (n = 30) were included in the study. INTERVENTION(S): None. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Plasma miRNA levels in endometriosis patients and control subjects. RESULT(S): We found that the levels of studied miRNAs varied with blood collection time, being lower in the morning than in the evening. When blood collection time was taken into account, the results revealed significantly lower levels of miR-200a and miR-141 in the evening plasma samples of women with endometriosis compared with surgically confirmed disease-free patients. However, the evening-sample levels of all three miRNAs were significantly lower in patients with stage I-II endometriosis than in endometriosis-free control subjects. In cases of stage III-IV endometriosis, only miR-200a levels were significantly lower compared with patients without endometriosis. Circulating miR-200a showed the best discriminative power to differentiate women with endometriosis from patients with similar complaints but without the disease. CONCLUSION(S): Our findings suggest that miR-200a and miR-141 have a potential as novel noninvasive biomarkers for endometriosis. In addition, we found that the plasma miR-200a, miR-200b and miR-141 levels vary with blood sampling time, so it is important to take the sample collection time into account when studying miRNAs as biomarkers.