Biofluid Specificity of Long Non-Coding RNA Profile in Hypertension: Relevance of Exosomal Fraction

Non-coding RNA (ncRNA)-mediated targeting of various genes regulates the molecular mechanisms of the pathogenesis of hypertension (HTN). However, very few circulating long ncRNAs (lncRNAs) have been reported to be altered in essential HTN. The aim of our study was to identify a lncRNA profile in plasma and plasma exosomes associated with urinary albumin excretion in HTN by next-generation sequencing and to assess biological functions enriched in response to albuminuria using GO and KEGG analysis. Plasma exosomes showed higher diversity and fold change of lncRNAs than plasma, and low transcript overlapping was found between the two biofluids. Enrichment analysis identified different biological pathways regulated in plasma or exosome fraction, which were implicated in fatty acid metabolism, extracellular matrix, and mechanisms of sorting ncRNAs into exosomes, while plasma pathways were implicated in genome reorganization, interference with RNA polymerase, and as scaffolds for assembling transcriptional regulators. Our study found a biofluid specific lncRNA profile associated with albuminuria, with higher diversity in exosomal fraction, which identifies several potential targets that may be utilized to study mechanisms of albuminuria and cardiovascular damage.