Background:  Recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) is defined as the occurrence of two or more consecutive pregnancy losses prior to 20^th week of gestation. There are several leading causes of RPL including uterine anatomical defects, infections, genetic, immunological, and environmental factors. However, despite in a large number of cases no causes have been identified, therefore, it is introduced as idiopathic.

Recent studies have implicated the role of miRNAs in endometriosis, preeclampsia, infertility and RPL. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the association of miR-196a2C>T (rs11614913) with RPL in Iranian women.

Materials and Methods: In this case-control study, 183 Iranian women including 83 patients with at least two unexplained consecutive pregnancy losses and 100 healthy controls with at least one live birth and no history of pregnancy loss were investigated. Patients with recurrent pregnancy losses due to anatomic, hormonal, chromosomal, infectious, autoimmune, or thrombotic causes were excluded from the study group. Genotyping was performed using Tetra- ARMS PCR method.

Results:  Significant difference in distribution of miR-196a2 rs11614913 genotypes was found in RPL patients in comparison to controls, with p value of 0.04 and odds ratio equal to 2.96 (95% CI: 1.03-7.03).

Conclusion: The results of the present study provide evidence for association between genetic variation in miR-196a2 and recurrent pregnancy loss. Further studies will be required to validate the significance of the studied genetic variation in diverse populations and its regulatory role on target genes.

Background: Circulating microRNAs are promising biomarkers in diagnosis and assessment of cancerous patients. Quantitative Real-time PCR assay is a sensitive test for evaluating the levels of miRNAs expression. Nevertheless, there is no concurrence on selecting appropriate reference genes for qPCR analysis of miRNAs in circulation. Therefore, the current study aimed to select a suitable reference gene for normalizing the RT-qPCR assay results in plasma samples of patients with gastric cancer.

Materials and Methods: Based on previously published studies, three molecules SNORD47, U6 RNA, and miR-103 were selected as the candidate reference genes. After RNA extraction from plasma samples of 40 patients with gastric cancer and 40 healthy individuals, expression levels of these molecules were evaluated using Real-time PCR method.

Results: The results showed that the developed assays are able to diagnose their specified targets by a suitable linear range. By comparing patients and control groups, although the expression levels of miR-103 molecule were not equal between the two groups (p= 0.017), SNORD47 and U6 RNAs had similar expression levels. However, the variations of SNORD47 expression were lower that U6 RNA.

Conclusion: Based on the results of the current study, the SNORD47 molecule has a stable expression levels in plasma samples of patients with gastric cancer and normal individuals and can be used as an appropriate reference gene for normalizing the quantitative data of qPCR assay.