MicroRNA expression profile in myocardial bridging patients

Myocardial bridging (MB), a common benign coronary anomaly, may bring about some unwanted complications such as angina-like chest pain. The only way of MB detection is coronary arteriography or coronary computed tomographic angiography, which is costly and invasive. This study intended to profile a panel of circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of MB.

Using TaqMan Low-Density Array followed by quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR) validation, we analyzed the expression of miRNAs in serum samples from 90 MB patients and 50 non-MB controls.

The Low-Density Array data showed that 196 miRNAs were differentially expressed in MB patient sera in comparison with controls. After qRT-PCR validation and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, a list of five miRNAs (miR-29b, miR-151-3p, miR-126, miR-503-3p and miR-645) showed the ability to distinguish MB patients from controls. The area under curve (AUC) values range from 0.722-0.938.

We have demonstrated that this panel of five serum miRNAs is expected to become potential non-invasive biomarkers for detection of MB.