Lack of association of polymorphism in miRNA-196a2 with Parkinson's disease risk in a Chinese population

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a new class of non-protein coding RNA molecules, which participate in diverse biological pathways. We hypothesized that miRNA-196a2 polymorphism is associated with the risk of Parkinson's disease (PD) in a Chinese population. In a case–control study of 549 PD patients and 736 control subjects frequency matched by age and gender, we genotyped the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs11614913 (T > C) in miRNA-196a2, whose target mRNA was alpha-synuclein, and assessed its association with risk of PD by TaqMan Genotyping method. No association was found for the miR-196a2 rs11614913 CT/CC genotype (odds ratio (OR), 0.879, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.681–1.135 for CT genotype; OR, 1.085, 95% CI, 0.793–1.484 for CC genotype) with risk of PD, compared with the TT genotype. These results suggest that SNP rs11614913 in miRNA-196a2 may not contribute to the susceptibility to PD.

► SNP rs11614913 (T > C) was genotyped by TaqMan SNP Genotyping Assay.
► No association was found for the miR-196a2 rs11614913 CT/CC genotype with risk of PD.
► This is the first study of the association of common SNP in pre-miRNA with PD risk.