Expression profiles of long noncoding RNAs and mRNAs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with acute myocardial infarction

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is the most serious type of coronary atherosclerotic diseases. The incidence of AMI in some countries increases year by year, and shows younger trend. Some study indicated that abnormal expression of lncRNAs was closely related to cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to examine the lncRNA expression profiles in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with AMI through controlled studies. In the present study, we examined the lncRNA and mRNA expression profiles in 8 patients with AMI, with 7 NCA (noncoronary artery) subjects as controls using RNA sequencing protocol (RNA-seq) on the Illumina HiSeq 4000 platform. The differentially expressed lncRNAs were selected for bioinformatic analysis including gene ontology (GO) enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway (KEGG). Quantitative real time PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to confirm the differential expression of lncRNAs. We kept about 11.29 gigabase (Gb) high-quality sequence data while the Q30 ranged from 94.39% to 95.19% for each sample. Compared to the lncRNA expression profiles of NCA controls, a total of 106 differentially expressed lncRNAs were discriminated in AMI patients, including 40 upregulated lncRNAs and 66 downregulated lncRNAs (P < .05). Among the genes corresponding to the identified mRNAs, 2905 genes are involved in biological processes, 339 in cellular components, and 501 in molecular functions. Based on the KEGG pathway analysis, the most enriched pathways corresponding to the differentially expressed lncRNAs were associated with systemic lupus erythematosus, alcoholism, oxidative phosphorylation, Parkinson's disease and viral carcinogenesis, and so on. Further, 3 upregulated and 3 downregulated lncRNAs were randomly selected for qRT-PCR verification and the results of qRT-PCR were consistent with the findings obtained from RNA sequencing analysis. As a result, differential expression profiles of lncRNAs in AMI were identified in our study. The results suggested that lncRNAs may play important roles in the biological and pathological processes of AMI. These findings may provide useful reference for the early diagnosis and risk stratification of AMI patients. To enlarge the sample size in the next step will be needed for further research to confirm our results.