Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Virol. Jun 25, 2025; 14(2): 101976
Published online Jun 25, 2025. doi: 10.5501/wjv.v14.i2.101976
Micro RNAs as a potential biomarker for predicting liver fibrosis severity in hepatitis C virus affected patients
Navneet Kaur, Ravinder Garg, Chaitanya Tapasvi, Gitanjali Goyal
Navneet Kaur, Department of Biochemistry, Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot 151203, Punjab, India
Ravinder Garg, Department of Medicine, Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot 151203, Punjab, India
Chaitanya Tapasvi, Department of Radiodiagnosis, Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot 151203, Punjab, India
Gitanjali Goyal, Department of Biochemistry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bathinda 151005, Punjab, India
Author contributions: Kaur N contributed towards concepts, design, literature search, clinical validation, experiments, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, editing and revision; Garg R, Tapasvi C and Goyal G contributed towards concepts, clinical study, data analysis, manuscript review and editing.
Institutional review board statement: The project initialized after due authorization from the Institutional Ethics Committee.
Informed consent statement: All participants who granted informed consent were enrolled in the study, regardless of gender or age.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflicts of interest to declare.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement- checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: The data supporting this study are not publicly available due to institutional restrictions and confidentiality agreements. Data sharing is subject to ethical approval and restrictions to protect participant confidentiality.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Navneet Kaur, MSc, Department of Biochemistry, Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Sadiq Road, Faridkot 151203, Punjab, India. navmann23@yahoo.com
Received: October 8, 2024
Revised: January 26, 2025
Accepted: February 20, 2025
Published online: June 25, 2025
Processing time: 262 Days and 19.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Early liver fibrosis detection by biomarkers improves treatment and prevents cirrhosis and liver failure. We investigated various microRNAs (miRNA-122, miRNA-21, miRNA-199a, miRNA-155) to determine liver fibrosis severity in untreated Hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients. Our study examined how miRNAs affect HCV fibrosis diagnosis. We tested miRNAs for liver fibrosis stage using statistical and probabilistic approaches for 100 HCV-positive individuals. Bayesian Networks were used to develop a miRNA diagnostic relationship for HCV liver fibrosis severity. miR-122, miR-155, and miR-21 were significantly elevated relative to controls and fibrosis severity (P ≤ 0.05) whereas MiR-199a decreased with fibrosis. Diagnostically, miR-122, miR-155, and miR-21 are accurate fibrosis biomarkers.