MicroRNAs and Child Neuropsychiatric Disorders: A Brief Review.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, endogenous, noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression through posttranscriptional mechanisms via degradation or inhibition of specific mRNAs targets. In recent years, abundant studies have illustrated the relevance of miRNAs in human psychopathology. In this current review, neuropsychiatric disorders with moderate to high prevalence among children and adolescents such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Dyslexia, Epilepsy, Schizophrenia and Tourette Syndrome were discussed focusing on the functional consequence of altered miRNA expression during the development of such diseases. The insight about the roles that miRNAs play in central nervous systems development such as cell proliferation and differentiation, synaptogenesis, synaptic plasticity, and apoptosis might be the key to explicate novel biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis of these disorders, as well as the finding of new targets for drug development for therapeutic approaches.