Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate the association of circulating miRNAs with white-coat hypertension (WCH) and further analyze whether miRNAs could be as potential biomarkers for WCH.
Method: Quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to evaluate the expression of selected miRNAs. The area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve was used to evaluate diagnostic accuracy.
Results: MiR-30a yielded an AUC of 0.984 (95% CI: 0.001-1.00; p < 0.001) and 0.816 (95% CI: 0.718-0.915; p < 0.001); miR-29 yielded an AUC of 0.955 (95% CI: 0.913-0.998; p < 0.001) and 0.799 (95% CI: 0.697-0.902; p < 0.001); miR-133 yielded an AUC of 0.949 (95% CI: 0.900-0.999; p < 0.001) and 0.713 (95% CI: 0.593-0.834; p < 0.001), respectively.
Conclusion: The study suggested that miR-30a, miR-29 and miR-133 have great potential to be noninvasive screening tools for WCH detection.
Keywords: hypertension; miRNA; white-coat hypertension.