Early disease diagnosis is critical for better management and treatment outcome of patients. Therefore, diagnostic methods should ideally be accurate, consistent, easy to perform at low cost and preferably non-invasive. In recent years, various
biomarkers have been studied for the detection of
cardiovascular diseases,
cerebrovascular diseases,
infectious diseases,
diabetes mellitus and
malignancies. Exosomal
microRNA (
miRNA) are
small non-coding RNA molecules that influence gene expression after transcription. Previous studies have shown that these types of
miRNAs can potentially be used as
biomarkers for
cancers of the breast and colon, as well as
diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. It may also be used to indicate viral and
bacterial infections, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),
tuberculosis and
hepatitis. However, its use in the diagnosis of
vector-borne diseases is rather limited. Therefore, this review aims to introduce several
miRNAs derived from exosomal plasma that may potentially serve as a disease
biomarker due to the body's immune response, with special focus on the early detection of
vector-borne diseases.