Objective: Renal denervation (RDN) is a new treatment option for resistant hypertension (RH), although it has been shown that reduced sympathetic nerve activity after RDN is the main cause of blood pressure decline. In view of the possible correlation between circRNA and hypertension and the metabolic state of the body after RDN, we investigated the potential role of circRNA in RDN treatment of RH.
Methods: Serum samples of patients with RH were collected before and 48 h after RDN. We explored the mechanism underlying RDN with high-throughput integration of circRNA data.
Results: There were 338 circRNAs that were differentiated before and after RDN; 170 were upregulated and 168 were downregulated (≥1.2-fold, P < 0.05), and the expression of five of them changed significantly (≥1.5-fold, P < 0.05). We used reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction to confirm these results in 13 other patients with RH. hsa_circRNA_000367 was upregulated and hsa_circRNA_405119 was downregulated after RDN. We predicted their downstream miRNA-mRNA network and analyzed their putative function via the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA pathway. GO/KEGG analysis showed that their functional annotation may be related to nerve injury and hypertension. We used the Venn Diagram Generator to obtain the intersection of predicted target and sympathetic nerve-related genes (from GeneCards website).
Conclusion: The mechanism underlying RDN may be closely related to upregulated hsa_circRNA_000367 or downregulated hsa_circRNA_405119 and involve regulated multiple pathways and multiple cellular and molecular biological processes. These circRNAs may potentially be used as treatment effect biomarkers in RDN.
Keywords: circular RNA microarray; renal denervation; resistant hypertension.
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