α-Asarone suppresses the proliferation and migration of ASMCs through targeting the lncRNA-PVT1/miR-203a/E2F3 signal pathway in RSV-infected rats

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory pulmonary disease and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection is a common cause of lower respiratory tract illness in infants and young children. alpha-Asarone presents many pharmacological effects and has been demonstrated to be useful in treating asthma. However, the functional mechanism of alpha-asarone in RSV-infected asthma has not been investigated. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been reported to play critical roles in many biological processes. Although many lncRNAs have been characterized, few were reported in asthma, especially in RSV-induced asthma. Currently, a novel post-transcriptional regulation has been proposed in which lncRNAs function as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) to competitively sponge miRNAs, thereby regulating the target genes. In the present study, we established an RSV-infected Sprague-Dawley rat model and demonstrated that lncRNA-PVT1 is involved in the mechanism of alpha-asarone in treating RSV-induced asthma, and lncRNA-PVT1 regulates the expression of E2F3 by functioning as a ceRNA which competitively sponges miR-203a.