Fig. 1

a Fold change in benign vs. control samples. Significant fold-changes were demonstrated in expression of four miRNAs between benign and control samples. b Fold change in PTC vs. control samples. Significant fold changes were demonstrated in expression of six miRNAs between PTC and control serum. Four of these were common to the benign vs. PTC comparison. c Fold change in PTC vs. benign samples. Statistically significant up-regulation of hsa-miR-10a-5p and hsa-let-7b-5p was seen between the serum of PTC vs. Benign patients, and statistically significant down-regulation of hsa-miR-146a-5p and hsa-miR-199b-3p. MicroRNAs hsa-miR-10-5p, hsa-miR-146a-5p and has-miR-199b-3 were also the most important hits in the Random Forest analysis