The decrease of miR-542-5p in silica-induced mouse pulmonary fibrosis was shown by the miRNAs microarray analysis in a study by Yuan et al. (2018) In that study, miR-542-5p was confirmed to reverse TGF-β1 or silica-induced mouse lung fibrosis by directly targeting integrin α6, which inhibited fibroblast activation and reduced the phosphorylation levels of FAK/PI3K/AKT in vitro (Yuan et al., 2018). This evidence concerns the gene AKT1 and pulmonary fibrosis.