Exercise responsive micro ribonucleic acids identify patients with coronary artery disease

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Research
• Molecular Biology
• Exercise Physiology

Background:

• Exercise can trigger acute coronary events, particularly in untrained individuals.
• Identifying individuals at risk for such events remains a significant clinical challenge.
• Micro ribonucleic acids (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs with regulatory roles, and their expression can be altered by physiological stimuli.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if specific microRNA (miRNA) expression patterns following intense exercise can differentiate between healthy individuals and patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).
• To explore the potential of circulating miRNAs as biomarkers for cardiovascular health and exercise-induced cardiac event risk.

Main Methods:

• Twenty healthy subjects and 20 CAD patients underwent maximal all-out cycle ergometry.
• Blood samples were collected pre- and post-exercise for total RNA extraction.
• Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was used to analyze the expression of 187 target miRNAs.

Main Results:

• At baseline, 18 miRNAs distinguished between healthy and CAD groups.
• Intense exercise significantly modulated 51 miRNAs in healthy subjects and 60 miRNAs in CAD patients (p < 0.05).
• A combination of pre-exercise miR-150-5p, post-exercise miR-101-3p, miR-141-3p, miR-200b-3p, and exercise capacity parameters achieved 92.5% accuracy in discriminating between groups.

Conclusions:

• This study demonstrates that a specific profile of circulating miRNAs combined with exercise capacity metrics can reliably differentiate healthy individuals from CAD patients.
• These findings suggest that miRNAs could serve as novel biomarkers for diagnosing CAD.
• The research opens possibilities for using miRNAs to identify individuals susceptible to exercise-induced cardiac events.