A highly reusable genosensor for late-life depression diagnosis based on microRNA 184 attomolar detection in human plasma

Late-Life Depression (LLD) is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders in elderly, causing significant functional impairments. MicroRNAs are small molecules involved in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. Elderly individuals diagnosed with LLD present down regulation of miR-184 (hsa-miR-184) expression compared to healthy patients. Therefore, this miR-184 can be used as a biomarker to diagnose LLD. Current LLD diagnosis depends primarily on clinical subjective identification, based on symptoms and variable scales. This work introduces a novel and facile approach for the LLD diagnosis based on the development of an electrochemical genosensor for miR-184 detection in plasma, using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). DPV results presented a 2-Fold increase in current value for healthy patients, compared to individuals with LLD when monitoring ethidium bromide oxidation peak. For EIS, a 1.5-fold increase in charge transfer resistance for healthy elderly subjects was observed in comparison with depressed patients. In addition, the analytical performance of the biosensor was evaluated using DPV, obtaining a linear response ranging from 10−9 mol L−1 to 10−17 mol L−1 of miR-184 in plasma and a detection limit of 10 atomoles L−1. The biosensor presented reusability, selectivity and stability, the current response remained 72% up to 50 days of storage. Thus, the genosensor proved to be efficient in the diagnosis of LLD, as well as the accurate quantification of miR-184 in real plasma samples of healthy and depressed patients.