10th international Luebeck conference on the pathophysiology and pharmacology of erythropoietin and other hemopoietic growth factors

Recombinant erythropoietins (rEPOs) as well as other erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) are used for medical treatment of anemia, but likewise ESAs can be misused for performance enhancing purposes in sports. Using small RNAseq, we investigated the effects of low dose administration of rEPO for 6 weeks on the miRNA profile of purified red blood cells (RBCs), in 7 male healthy recreational athletes. Despite lacking most of long RNAs, RBCs contain diverse and abundant miRNAs. For each of the 14 samples 100 ng total RNA, of highly purified RBCs, were used for sequencing with Illumina NextSeq500 system. Following bowtie alignment and mapping of the raw reads, edgeR was used for normalizat…