Serum long non-coding RNA uc022bqs.1 is a potential biomarker for early diagnosis of human coronary heart disease

Aim: To determine the lncRNA expression profile in serum from patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) and investigate potential clinical significance of specific lncRNA. Methods: The difference of lncRNA expression profile between CHD patients and normal individuals was analyzed by lncRNA microarray. Quantitive real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was adopted to confirm the expression of representative lncRNA in 30 cases of normal control (NC), 30 cases of stable angina pectoris (SAP), 42 cases of unstable angina pectoris (UAP) and 30 cases of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The relationship between lncRNA expression levels and clinicopathological factors of patients with CHD was explored in our study. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was adopted to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of the specific lncRNAs. Results: LncRNA expression profile showed 224 lncRNAs with expression alteration eight fold or above. The up-regulated and down-regulated candidate lncRNAs were 59 and 165 (P<0.005), respectively. The expression of uc022bqs.1 verified by qRT-PCR was consistent with that by microarray analysis. With ROC curves analysis, uc022bqs.1 was found to well distinguish the SAP, UAP and AMI from NC. And the areas under curve (AUC) was 0.796 (95% CI: 0.681 similar to 0.911), 0.821 (95% CI: 0.718 similar to 0.924), 0.846 (95% CI: 0.795 similar to 0.932), respectively. Particularly, the AUC for CHD and NC individuals was 0.895 (95% CI: 0.824 similar to 0.965), and the sensitivity and specificity were 79.5% and 83.3%, respectively. Conclusions: Uc022bqs.1 is highly expressed in serum of patients with CHD, and our data suggest that serum uc022bqs.1 can serve as a potential biomarker for early diagnosis of coronary heart diseases.