Field: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cancer ResearchType: Couldn't replicate a published resultArea: nutritionTarget: Dietary milk microRNAs in human bloodStage: replication
Hypothesis
Drinking cow's milk would raise blood levels of miR-29b and miR-200c in adults, as a recent report found, possibly because milk microRNAs pass into the blood.
What failed
Re-testing samples from the original study, 223 small RNAs showed no significant change after drinking milk, confirmed by qPCR. Sequencing found no miR-29b or miR-200c reads and no uniquely bovine microRNAs linked to milk intake.
Broken assumption
MicroRNAs in food survive digestion and enter human blood.
Why
The abstract does not give a cause. The results do not support the transfer of microRNAs from food into human blood.
From the published paper: Auerbach et al. F1000Research, 2016. ↗CC BY