Atherosclerotic plaque instability in carotid arteries: miR-200c as a promising biomarker

Early recognition of vulnerable carotid plaques could help identifying patients at high stroke risk, who may benefit of earlier revascularization. Nowadays, different biomarkers of plaque instability have been unravelled, among these microRNAs are promising tools for the diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. Inflammation, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and endothelial dysfunction play a key role in unstable plaques genesis. We showed that miR-200c induces endothelial dysfunction, ROS production and a positive mechanism among miR-200c and miR-33a/b, two microRNAs involved in atherosclerosis progression. The goal of the present study was to determine whether miR-200c could be an atherosclerosis biomarker.Carotid plaques of patients that underwent carotid endarterectomy (CEA) were assayed for miR-200c expression. miR-200c was up-regulated in carotid plaques (n=22) and its expression was higher in unstable (n=12) vs stable (n=10) plaques.miR-200c positively correlated with instability biomarkers (i.e. monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, cicloxigenase-2, Interleukin-6, metalloproteinase1,9) and miR-33a/b. Moreover, miR-200c negatively correlated with stability biomarkers (i.e. ZEB1, endothelial nitric oxide synthase, forkhead boxO1 and Sirtuin1) (stable plaques=15, unstable plaques=15).Circulating miR-200c was up-regulated before CEA in 24 patients, correlates with miR-33a/b and decreased 1day after CEA. Interestingly, 1month after CEA, circulating miR-200c is low in patien...
Source: Clinical Science - Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Tags: PublishAheadOfPrint Source Type: research