Schizophrenia is a complex and heterogenous psychiatric disorder. This study aimed to demonstrate the potential of circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) as a clinical biomarker to stratify schizophrenia patients and to enhance understandings of their heterogenous pathophysiology. We measured levels of 179 miRNA and 378 proteins in plasma samples of schizophrenia patients experiencing acute psychosis and obtained their Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) scores. The plasma miRNA profile revealed three subgroups of schizophrenia patients, where one subgroup tended to have higher scores of all the PANSS subscales compared to the other subgroups. The subgroup with high PANSS scores had four distinctively downregulated miRNAs, which enriched 'Immune Response' according to miRNA set enrichment analysis and were reported to negatively regulate IL-1β, IL-6, and TNFα. The same subgroup had 22 distinctively upregulated proteins, which enriched 'Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction' according to protein set enrichment analysis, and all the mapped proteins were pro-inflammatory cytokines. Hence, the subgroup is inferred to have comparatively high inflammation within schizophrenia. In conclusion, miRNAs are a potential biomarker that reflects both disease symptoms and molecular pathophysiology, and identify a patient subgroup with high inflammation. These findings provide insights for the precision medicinal strategies for anti-inflammatory treatments in the high-inflammation subgroup of schizophrenia.
Keywords: circulating microRNA; clinical biomarker; inflammation; patient subgroups; schizophrenia.