Aims: Most dilated cardiomyopathies are either an ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (IsDC) or an idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IdDC). The treatments for both IsDC and IdDC are of a similar nature (upwards of 90%). Coronary revascularization, however, is only feasible for IsDC. The purpose of this study was to determine if microRNAs (miRNAs) could be used as biomarkers to distinguish between IsDC and IdDC.
Materials and methods: Patients were divided into two groups: IsDC and IdDC, with 25 patients in each group, and 10 healthy persons serving as a control group. In our study, the following miRNA expressions were detected using the Rotor Gene Q real-time polymerase chain reaction cycler (Qiagen) for all IsDC and IdDC subjects: let-7b-5p, let-7c-5p, miR-1-3p, miR-15b-5p, miR-17-5p, miR-19a-3p, miR-19b-3p, miR-20a-5p, miR-20b-5p, miR-23a-3p, miR-24-3p, miR-27a-3p, miR-28-5p, miR-30e-5p, miR-99b-5p, miR-100-5p, miR-101-3p, miR-103a-3p, miR-106a-5p, miR-125b-5p, miR-126-3p, miR-126-5p, miR-140-5p, miR-191-5p, miR-195-5p, miR-199a-3p, miR-214-3p, miR-222-3p, miR-342-3p, and miR-378a-3p.
Results: We found that miR-24-3p, miR-28-5p, miR-100-5p, miR-103-3p, miR-125b5p, miR-214-3p, let-7b-5p, and let-7c-5p were each overexpressed by more than twofold in both the IsDC and IdDC groups when compared to the controls. We also found that miR-15b-5p and miR-106a-5p may be used to distinguish between patients with IsDC and IdDC.
Conclusions: Our study has demonstrated that miR-15b-5p and miR-106a-5p expression levels could potentially serve as useful biomarkers for distinguishing between IsDC and IdDC.
Keywords: biomarker; dilated cardiomyopathy; idiopathic; ischemic; miRNAs.