Potential utility of miRNAs derived from pleural fluid extracellular vesicles to differentiate between benign and malignant pleural effusions.

Background: Cytological examination is of suboptimal sensitivity but high specificity for the diagnosis of malignant pleural effusions (MPEs). Pleural fluid extracellular vesicles (PFEVs) are enriched with disease-specific microRNAs (miRNAs) which may improve the diagnostic yield for MPE. Our previous study demonstrated the feasibility of isolating miRNAs from PFEVs and profiling PFEV miRNAs by Nanostring nCounter Human v3 miRNA expression assay.