An anti-correlated association between the expression level of a miRNA and its predicted mRNA targets may indicate a potential mRNA degrading effect of the miRNA [35]. To investigate whether miRNAs were associated with their mRNA targets in adipose tissue, we applied a gene set enrichment (GSE) test [36]. Global mRNA expression was profiled using the Affymetrix human GeneChip HGU133 Plus 2.0 array (see Materials and Methods) and mRNA expression profiles from 50 of the abdominal adipose samples and 55 of the gluteal adipose samples were available for integrated miRNA-mRNA analysis.
