KCNQ1OT1, HIF1A-AS2 and APOA1-AS are promising novel biomarkers for diagnosis of coronary artery disease

This study aimed to evaluate the potential of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) as biomarkers for coronary artery disease (CAD). We measured the levels of three atherosclerosis- or cardiac-related lncRNAs in peripheral blood monocyte cells (PBMCs) from 20 CAD patients and 20 non-CAD control participants using real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (real-time RT-PCR) methods. We found that the levels of lncRNA KCNQ1 opposite strand/antisense transcript 1 (KCNQ1OT1), hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha-antisense RNA 2 (HIF1A-AS2) and apolipoprotein A-1 antisense RNA (APOA1-AS) were significantly increased in CAD patients (KCNQ1OT1 increased by 2.38-fold, P = 0.00042; HIF1A-AS2 increased by 2.00-fold, P = 0.0001; APOA1-AS increased by 4.52-fold, P = 0.000048). The area under the ROC curve was 0.865 for KCNQ1OT1, 0.852 for HIF1A-AS2, and 0.967 for APOA1-AS. Furthermore, the combination of lncRNAs resulted in a much higher AUC value of 0.990 for the prediction of CAD. Spearman's correlation analysis showed that APOA1-AS was positively correlated with NT-proBNP, CKMB, MYO and HsTnT, whereas HIF1A-AS2 was correlated with NT-proBNP and HsTnT. Hence, the elevation of KCNQ1OT1, HIF1A-AS2 and APOA1-AS predicts CAD and these molecules may be considered as novel biomarkers of CAD.