Endothelial dysfunction in diabetes and hypertension: Role of microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs

Publication date: Available online 17 October 2018Source: Life SciencesAuthor(s): Hai-na Zhang, Qiao-qiao Xu, Abhimanyu Thakur, Martin Omondi Alfred, Manas Chakraborty, Arunima Ghosh, Xu-ben YuAbstractThe vascular endothelium acts as a barrier between the blood flow and the inner lining of the vessel wall, and it functions as a filtering machinery to filter out any unwanted transfer of materials from both sides (i.e. the blood and the surrounding tissues). It is evident that diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension disturb the normal endothelial functions in humans and lead to endothelial dysfunction, which may further precede to the development of atherosclerosis. Long non-coding RNAs and micro RNAs both are types of non-coding RNAs which, in the recent years, have increasingly been studied in the pathophysiology of many diseases including diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, neurological diseases, and others. Recent findings have pointed out important aspects on their relevance to endothelial function as well as dysfunction of the system which may arise from presence of diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. Diabetes or hypertension-mediated endothelial dysfunction show characteristics such as reduced nitric oxide synthesis through suppression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase activity in endothelial cells, reduced sensitivity of nitric oxide in smooth muscle cells, and inflammation – all of which have been either shown to be directly caused by ...
Source: Life Sciences - Category: Biology Source Type: research