Can Micro RNA-24 Affect the Cardiovascular Morbidity in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus by Targeting YKL-40?

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with inflammatory nature. One of the leading causes of death in SLE patients is cardiovascular (CVS) morbidity. MiRNA-24 is highly expressed in vascular endothelial cells (VECs). This dysregulated expression pattern is associated with dysfunction or even damage of VECs and leads to the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases. YKL- 40 is an inflammatory glycoprotein involved in the pathogenesis of endothelial dysfunction and thereby atherosclerosis. In this work, we aimed at illustrating the possible role of miR-24 and its target YKL-40 in the pathogenesis of the CVS morbidity associated with SLE.

This work was conducted on 40 SLE patients and 40 healthy controls. Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) was done to estimate the expression level of miRNA-24 in serum. In addition, we measured the serum level of YKL-40 using ELISA.

miR-24-fold change was found to be down-regulated, whereas serum YKL- 40 was up-regulated among SLE patients with observed significant and negative correlation between the two parameters.

Our study provided an insight about the role of miR-24 and its target serum YKL-40 protein in the development of SLE-related inflammation and atherosclerosis.