Based on our univariate analysis, we identified systemic changes in mRNA and miRNA expression levels in the NAc between subjects with AD and healthy controls. Specifically, at a nominal p≤ 0.05 we identified 4,571 (25%) differentially expressed mRNA transcripts and 240 (14%) differentially expressed miRNAs, which are statistically much greater than these expected by chance (hypergeometric p = 5x 10−5 and p = 9x10-9, respectively). Our results are also in agreement with results from previous postmortem brain expression studies, which have shown similar widespread changes in gene expression in PFC and VTA [3, 40]. The univariate analyses results for the mRNA and miRNA transcripts are provided in S1 Table, respectively.
