Sensitive miRNA markers for the detection and management of NSTEMI acute myocardial infarction patients

Background: NSTEMI patients will benefit greatly with better biomarker screening to detect and prognose the disease. Using miRNAs, we evaluated the clinical utility in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients during disease onset and therapy. Methods: A total of 145 NSTEMI patients and 30 healthy volunteers with no history of cardiovascular disease (CVD) were recruited. miRNA levels in plasma were measured during disease manifestation and serially during treatment phase. Levels of multiple candidates (miR-1, miR-133, miR-208, miR-499) were analysed. The miRNA levels were directly compared between NSTEMI and healthy volunteers. Results: Cardiac related miRNAs levels demonstrated significant increase compared with healthy controls. miR-499 exhibited the highest elevation with more than 6.03-fold change compared with healthy participants. Conventional cTnT measurements were in good agreement to miRNA relative expressions. In serial measurements, miR-499 demonstrated large fluctuations and could be linked to the secondary complications. In contrast, miR-133 showed insignificant variations in mean levels during serial sampling. Conclusions: miRNA is a potentially sensitive biomarker for NSTEMI AMI patients for disease detection and treatment monitoring. The sensitivities were comparable to cTnT for diagnostic accuracy and patients with sustained or higher levels were correlated to secondary complications.