Circulating circular RNAs as biomarkers for the diagnosis of essential hypertension with carotid plaque

ABSTRACT

Background

At present, no early diagnostic markers for essential hypertension (EH)-induced subclinical target organs damage (such as carotid plaque) are available. This study aimed to identify the circular RNAs (circRNAs) in EH with carotid plaques, and assess their utility as biomarkers.

Methods

First, circRNAs were identified through microarry analysis and database prediction. Second, a case-control study of EH patients with carotid plaque (n = 100) and healthy controls (n = 100) was performed to evaluate circRNAs expression in peripheral blood. Finally, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was established to evaluate the diagnostic value.

Results

Five circRNAs (hsa_circ_0105130, hsa_circ_0109569, hsa_circ_0072659, hsa_circ_0079586 and hsa_circ_0064684) were identified as the candidate circRNAs. We found that circRNAs were increased in case group compared with controls (P < .05). The results of ROC shown that these five circRNAs, especially hsa_circ_0109569 (AUC = 0.741), all had the moderate predictive value.

Conclusions

Our study revealed circulating circRNAs may act as promising noninvasive biomarkers for early detection and population screening of EH-induced subclinical target organ injury.

KEYWORDS:

• Essential hypertension
• subclinical target organ injury
• carotid plaque
• circular RNA
• biomarker

Author contributions

Conceptualization: L.Z. and W.H.; Data collection, clinical specimens collection, and experimental operation: Y.X., Z.Z., Z.T., L.S. and H.Q.; Writing - original draft preparation: Z.Z., H.Q.; Writing - review and editing: S.Z. All authors critically reviewed and approved the present version of the manuscript.

Availability of data

All data presented in this study are available upon request for correspondence from the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics declarations

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Ethics Committee of the Ningbo University (NBU-2020-114) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.

Human subjects/informed consent statement

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for inclusion in the study.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10641963.2022.2093894

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Public Welfare Technology Application Research Project of Zhejiang Province under Grant [LGF21H260006]; and Graduate Research Innovation Fund of Ningbo University under Grant [IF2022188, IF2022192].