Differential expression of circulating long non-coding RNAs in patients with acute myocardial infarction

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are non-protein coding transcripts regulating various critical physiological and pathological processes, yet limited information is available about lncRNAs expression in acute myocardial infarction (AMI). We aimed to identified differentially expressed lncRNAs in blood samples of patients with AMI to assess their diagnostic value. Differential expression of lncRNAs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of patients with non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) and ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) was compared by RNA sequencing method and validated by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was used to evaluate diagnostic accuracy. Gene ontology (GO) enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses of lncRNA-coexpressed mRNAs were conducted to determine the related biological modules and pathological pathways. RNA sequencing data showed that 58 lncRNAs were differentially expressed between NSTEMI patients and STEMI patients, including 42 upregulated lncRNAs and 16 down-regulated lncRNAs. The ROC curves showed that ENST00000508020.2, LNC_001265, LNC_001526, and LNC_002674 could distinguish AMI patients with preferable sensitivity and specificity. GO enrichment analysis of lncRNA-coexpressed mRNAs indicated that the biological modules were correlated with cell adhesion, calcium ion homeostasis, complement receptor mediated signaling pathway, and immune system process. KEGG pathway analysis indicated that the lncRNAs-co-expressed mRNAs were involved in the regulation of peroxisome proliferators-activated receptors (PPAR) signaling pathway, mTOR signaling pathway, Insulin signaling pathway, HIF-1 signaling, and chemokin signaling pathway. Our results are in line with the previous findings, suggesting that differential expression of lncRNAs would be helpful to understand the molecular mechanism of AMI and might be useful biomarkers for noninvasive diagnostic application. Further studies are still needed to verify our findings and hypothesis.