Can Micro RNA-24 Affect the Cardiovascular Morbidity in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus by Targeting YKL-40?

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with inflammatory nature. One of the leading causes of death in SLE patients is cardiovascular (CVS) morbidity. MiRNA-24 is highly expressed in vascular endothelial cells (VECs). This dysregulated expression pattern is associated with dysfunction or even damage of VECs and leads to the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases. YKL- 40 is an inflammatory glycoprotein involved in the pathogenesis of endothelial dysfunction and thereby atherosclerosis. In this work, we aimed at illustrating the possible role of miR-24 and its target YKL-40 in the pathogenesis of the CVS morbidity associated with SLE.

This work was conducted on 40 SLE patients and 40 healthy controls. Quantitative realtime PCR (qPCR) was done to estimate the expression level of miRNA-24 in serum. In addition, we measured the serum level of YKL-40 using ELISA.

miR-24-fold change was found to be down-regulated, whereas serum YKL- 40 was upregulated among SLE patients with observed significant and negative correlation between the two parameters.

Our study provided an insight about the role of miR-24 and its target serum YKL-40 protein in the development of SLE-related inflammation and atherosclerosis.