HMDD v2.0: a database for experimentally supported human microRNA and disease associations

Abstract

Comprehensive databases of microRNA-disease associations are continuously demanded in biomedical researches. The recently launched version 3.0 of Human MicroRNA Disease Database (HMDD v3.0) manually collects a significant number of miRNA-disease association entries from literature. Comparing to HMDD v2.0, this new version contains 2-fold more entries. Besides, the associations have been more accurately classified based on literature-derived evidence code, which results in six generalized categories (genetics, epigenetics, target, circulation, tissue and other) covering 20 types of detailed evidence code. Furthermore, we added new functionalities like network visualization on the web interface. To exemplify the utility of the database, we compared the disease spectrum width of miRNAs (DSW) and the miRNA spectrum width of human diseases (MSW) between version 3.0 and 2.0 of HMDD. HMDD is freely accessible at http://www.cuilab.cn/hmdd. With accumulating evidence of miRNA-disease associations, HMDD database will keep on growing in the future.