Aging is a key risk factor for chronic diseases of the elderly. MicroRNAs regulate post-transcriptional gene silencing through base-pair binding on their target mRNAs. We identified nonlinear changes in age-related microRNAs by analyzing whole blood from 1334 healthy individuals. We observed a larger influence of the age as compared to the sex and provide evidence for a shift to the 5’ mature form of miRNAs in healthy aging. The addition of 3059 diseased patients uncovered pan-disease and disease-specific alterations in aging profiles. Disease biomarker sets for all diseases were different between young and old patients. Computational deconvolution of whole-blood miRNAs into blood cell types suggests that cell intrinsic gene expression changes may impart greater significance than cell abundance changes to the whole blood miRNA profile. Altogether, these data provide a foundation for understanding the relationship between healthy aging and disease, and for the development of age-specific disease biomarkers.

衰老是老年人慢性疾病的关键危险因素。MicroRNA通过其靶mRNA上的碱基对结合来调节转录后基因沉默。通过分析1334名健康个体的全血，我们确定了与年龄相关的microRNA的非线性变化。我们观察到，与性别相比，年龄的影响更大，并提供了在健康衰老中转变为5'成熟形式的miRNA的证据。3059名患病患者的加入发现了泛病和衰老特征的疾病特异性改变。年轻人和老年人之间，所有疾病的疾病生物标记物集均不同。全血miRNA的计算解卷积显示为血细胞类型，表明细胞内在基因表达的变化可能比全血miRNA谱的细胞丰度变化具有更大的意义。共，