Comparative Study of Circulating microRNA Changes in Patients With Liver Injury and Healthy Subjects

The ICU patients after surgery or under chemotherapies in sponsor's institutes will be enrolled in this observational cohort of investigation. Whole blood samples will be separated immediately into plasma for storage. The participants will have their 2nd and 3rd samples obtained at 24-48 hours and 48-72 hours respectively. The schedule of most of sampling schedule is designed in concordance with the ICU routines to avoid extra burdens on patients. The plasma samples will be used as prognostic markers in prognostic and predictive values in identifying patients at high risk for mortality and acute liver failure. Patients who are discharged will be tracked for any clinical recurrence of the diseases every 28 days to assess the diagnostic accuracy of the miRNA biomarkers that are measured. The 2nd objective will be assessed by measuring the concentration of miRNAs in recruited healthy volunteers before and after a brief public speech. The circulating miRNAs will be detected directly from 1 - 5 ul of plasma samples with the miRFLP assay. This capillary electrophoresis-based miRNA quantification method detects multiple miRNAs in absolute copy number in smaller sample signature with negligible batch to batch variation, thus providing a standardizable miRNA detection method.