Circulating miR-379 as a potential novel biomarker for diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction.

OBJECTIVE Previous studies have demonstrated that microRNA-379 (miR-379) was involved in regulating cell proliferation. The present study aimed to investigate its potential role in the diagnosis of cute myocardium infarction (AMI). PATIENTS AND METHODS Plasma samples from 30 patients with AMI and 30 healthy adults (non-AMI controls) were collected. The abundance of circulating miR-379 was determined using quantitative Real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) analyses were performed by GraphPad Prism 5.0 and the areas under the curve (AUC) were calculated. The proliferative ability and cell cycle progression of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) were measured by CCK-8 and flow cytometry, respectively. RESULTS We found that the plasma miR-379 level was significantly decreased in patients with AMI compared with healthy people. Further studies demonstrated the miR-379 was negatively correlated with creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) and cTns in study subjects. Finally, ROC analysis revealed an AUC value of 0.751 in discriminating AMI patients from healthy controls. Function assay in vitro further indicated miR-379 inhibited cell proliferation and induced cell cycle G0/G1 arrest in VSMCs. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that miR-379 may be a novel biomarker for the diagnosis of AMI by affecting VSMC cell function, which could be used in the early diagnosis of AMI.