Relationship of cardiovascular disease risk factors and noncoding RNAs with hypertension: a case-control study

BACKGROUND The present study sought to explore the relationship of common cardiovascular disease risk factors and noncoding RNAs with essential hypertension (EH). METHODS A total of 402 EH patients and 402 gender- and age-frequency matched healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Each participant received a questionnaire survey, physical examination and laboratory tests. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was performed to assess relative expression levels of six noncoding RNAs (NR_027032, NR_034083, NR_104181, miR-126, miR-143 and miR-145) in peripheral blood leucocytes. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the risk of having EH between hypertensive and non-hypertensive patients. RESULTS Analysis showed that participants with anxiety, high body mass index, abdominal obesity and family history of hypertension had higher risk for EH, whereas those with bland diet and occupational physical activities had lower risk for EH. qPCR assays showed that NR_027032 (P = 0.015) and NR_034083 (P = 0.004) were significantly reduced in EH patients compared with controls, whereas NR_104181 (P = 0.007), miR-143 (P = 0.005) and miR-145 (P = 0.015) were significantly elevated. After controlling the cardiovascular risk factors, multivariate analysis showed that lower expression levels of NR_034083 and higher expression levels of NR_104181 and miR-143 were risk factors for EH. CONCLUSIONS EH is a result of environmental and epigenetic factors. Strikingly, NR_034083, NR_104181 and miR-143 may be correlated with the risk for EH development; therefore, epigenetic markers could be used to measure hypertension levels to help elucidate the pathogenesis of EH.