Peripheral Blood Leukocyte Expression of lncRNA MIAT and Its Diagnostic and Prognostic Value in Ischemic Stroke

Ischemic stroke (IS) is an extremely heterogeneous disease with variable pathogenesis. Due to the lack of early diagnostic markers, the mortality rate of IS remains high. Cumulative evidence shows that long noncoding RNAs among noncoding RNAs play important roles in cardiovascular diseases. In the present study, we focused on the expression pattern of myocardial infarction-associated transcript (MIAT) and its clinical significance in IS.

Blood samples were obtained from IS patients (n = 189) and healthy controls (n = 189). The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) was measured at the time of admission. Short-term functional outcome was measured by the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at 3 months after admission. Multivariate analyses were performed using logistic regression models. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the accuracy of MIAT in the diagnosis and prognosis of IS.

In IS patients, MIAT expression level was significantly upregulated and correlated with NIHSS scores (r = .421, P <.001), mRS (r = .339, P <.001), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (r = .309, P <.001), and infarct volume (r = .318, P <.001). ROC curves indicated that MIAT could serve as a potential marker for discriminating IS patients from the controls with an area under the curve of .842 (95% confidence interval, .802-.881). The overall survival analysis showed that patients with higher MIAT expression had a relatively poor prognosis. Meanwhile, the multivariate analysis revealed that MIAT was an independent prognostic marker of functional outcome and death in patients with IS.

Our data suggested that MIAT might be a potential diagnostic and prognostic indicator in IS.