Clinical value of dysregulated miR-125b-5p in severe pneumonia children.

Background: Severe pneumonia is an important contributor to the high mortality of sick young children. The microRNA-125b-5p (miR-125b-5p), which is widely involved in various cancers, is closely related to a variety of lung diseases. However, its role in severe pneumonia children remains to be studied.

Objective: This study focused on the expression and clinical value of miR-125b-5p in severe pneumonia children.

Materials and methods: The study subjects included 96 pneumonia children and 127 severe pneumonia children. These children were aged between 2-10 years. The expression level of serum miR-125b-5p was assessed by qRT-PCR. The receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was employed to identify severe pneumonia children from pneumonia individuals. Kaplan-Meier curve was plotted based on follow-up results and multivariate Cox regression analysis was applied to evaluate the contribution of miR-125b-5p to poor prognostic in severe pneumonia children.

Results: MiR-125b-5p was remarkedly reduced in severe pneumonia children compared to pneumonia individuals. The area under the curve (AUC) was 0.9267 and the sensitivity and specificity were 84.25% and 89.58%, respectively. The accumulative survival rate in low miR-125b-5p group showed a remarkable decrease compared to the high miR-125b-5p group (P = 0.033). Increased procalcitonin (PCT, HR: 2.631, 95% CI: 1.029-6.732, P = 0.043) and reduced miR-125b-5p (HR: 0.301, 95% CI: 0.110-0.826, P = 0.020) were found to be related to the poor prognosis in severe pneumonia children.

Conclusion: The reduced miR-125b-5p was an underlying diagnostic indicator of severe pneumonia and was an independent risk factor of poor prognosis in severe pneumonia children.