Abstract: Objective:The aim was to investigate correlation between expression level of miR-299-5p and miR-127-3p in peripheral blood and nonsyndromic orofacial clefts (NSOC). Methods:Ten cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL/P) patients, 10 cleft palate only (CPO) and 10 healthy children were selected from the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, using real-time RT-PCR（qRT-PCR）to detect the relative expression of miR-299-5p miR-127-3p in the peripheral blood from three groups. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and area under the curve (AUC) were applied to analyze the diagnostic efficacy of miR-299-5p and miR-127-3p for NSOC. Results:Compared with the healthy control group, the expression of miR-299-5p and miR-127-3p in CL/P group and CPO group was down-regulated, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). The AUC of miR-299-5p and miR-127-3p in the diagnosis of NSOC were 0.770 and 0.810, respectively. The AUC of miR-299-5p and miR-127-3p in the combined diagnosis of NSOC was 0.915. Conclusions:The down-regulation of miR-299-5p and miR-127-3p in peripheral blood of children with NSOC may be related to the progression of NSOC, which may become a potential biomarker for the diagnosis of NSOC, and the combination of the two miRNAs is more effective.

Key words: nonsyndromic orofacial clefts, ?miR-299-5p, ?miR-127-3p, ?biomarker