Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is the major public health problem. It is the leading cause of chronic liver disease with significant morbidity/mortaliy and economic burdens in the western world. Interestingly, it only occurs in up to 20%-30% of excessive drinkers, suggesting that other factors in addition to alcohol might be involved in the progression from excessive drinking to ALD in a subset of subjects. The new landscape of human transcriptome along with the identification of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) has uncovered their importance in the pathophysiology of human diseases. However, the function of lncRNA in ALD remains completely unknown and unexplored. This exploratory R21 application will fill in this knowledge gap by reveling the roles of lncRNAs in the pathogenesis and progression of ALD.
Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a major cause of chronic liver diseases in the United States, which ranges from steatosis to cirrhosis. This study will identify unique whole blood long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), signatures that are differentially expressed in three valuable clinical cohorts with healthy controls (HC), excessive drinkers without liver disease (ED) and those with advanced alcoholic liver disease/alcoholic cirrhosis (AC), and to determine their expression in the liver tissues of patients with alcoholic cirrhosis. The prognosti significance of the liver-specific lncRNAs and survival outcome will also be determined.
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