Background: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is considered to be one of the most pivotal causes of death in the world. Over the past two decades, significant changes occurred in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of CAD, which has helped reduce mortality rates. miRNAs are a class of more than 5000 non-encoding RNA molecules (21 to 25 nucleotides across the length) that regulate the complex biological processes. Today, miRNAs are used to study cardiovascular diseases. In the present study, the expression of miR-146a،miR-27a ،miR-149 and miR-34a in plasma suffering from CAD and control group were investigated.
Methods and Results: The present research was performed on 30 men with coronary artery stenosis (CAD) and 30 healthy men as controls. The expression levels of miR-146a, miR-27a, miR-149 and miR-34a in the plasma of patients with CAD and control group were measured using real-time PCR. Also, the correlation between the expression of circulating miRNAs levels and biochemical LDL-C, HDL-C, BMI, and cholesterol were evaluated. The expression of miR-27a in plasma of CAD group was higher than control group (p=0.020). The expression of miR-146a was downregulated in CAD patients compared to of non-CAD group (p=0. 026). However, the expression of miR-34a, miR-149 in the plasma of CAD patients were not significantly difference with the control group. In addition to, a direct correlation was found between the expression of miR-146a and HDL-c, the expression of miR-27a and LDL-C and the expression of miR-34a and total cholesterol. Also, the negative correlation between expressions of miR-149 with BMI was reported.
Conclusion. The obtained results demonstrated that miRNAs was closely related to biochemical factors and it points out the fact that miRNAs can be applied as a potential strategy for diagnosis and treatment of CAD.