Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Department of Cardiology, St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim, Norway.
Sci Rep. 2023 May 10;13(1):7580. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-34642-6.
Lipid-rich coronary atherosclerotic plaques often cause myocardial infarction (MI), and circulating biomarkers that reflect lipid content may predict risk of MI. We investigated the association between circulating microRNAs (miRs) are lipid-rich coronary plaques in 47 statin-treated patients (44 males) with stable coronary artery disease undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention. We assessed lipid content in non-culprit coronary artery lesions with near-infrared spectroscopy and selected the 4 mm segment with the highest measured lipid core burden index (maxLCBI). Lipid-rich plaques were predefined as a lesion with maxLCBI ≥ 324.7. We analyzed 177 circulating miRs with quantitative polymerase chain reaction in plasma samples. The associations between miRs and lipid-rich plaques were analyzed with elastic net. miR-133b was the miR most strongly associated with lipid-rich coronary plaques, with an estimated 18% increase in odds of lipid-rich plaques per unit increase in miR-133b. Assessing the uncertainty by bootstrapping, miR-133b was present in 82.6% of the resampled dataset. Inclusion of established cardiovascular risk factors did not attenuate the association. No evidence was found for an association between the other analyzed miRs and lipid-rich coronary plaques. Even though the evidence for an association was modest, miR-133b could be a potential biomarker of vulnerable coronary plaques and risk of future MI. However, the prognostic value and clinical relevance of miR-133b needs to be assessed in larger cohorts.
富含脂质的冠状动脉粥样硬化斑块常导致心肌梗死 (MI)，反映脂质含量的循环生物标志物可能预测 MI 风险。我们研究了循环 microRNAs (miRs) 与 47 名接受经皮冠状动脉介入治疗的稳定型冠状动脉疾病他汀类药物治疗患者（44 名男性）之间的关系。我们使用近红外光谱法评估非罪犯冠状动脉病变中的脂质含量，并选择脂质核心负担指数 (maxLCBI) 最高的 4mm 节段。富含脂质的斑块被定义为 maxLCBI≥324.7 的病变。我们使用定量聚合酶链反应分析了血浆样本中的 177 种循环 miR。使用弹性网络分析 miR 与富含脂质斑块之间的关联。miR-133b 与富含脂质的冠状动脉斑块相关性最强，miR-133b 每增加一个单位，脂质斑块的可能性就会增加 18%。通过 bootstrap 评估不确定性，miR-133b 存在于 82.6%的重新采样数据集中。纳入已建立的心血管危险因素并不能减弱这种关联。其他分析的 miR 与富含脂质的冠状动脉斑块之间没有发现关联的证据。尽管关联的证据有限，但 miR-133b 可能是易损冠状动脉斑块和未来 MI 风险的潜在生物标志物。然而，miR-133b 的预后价值和临床相关性需要在更大的队列中进行评估。
