Expression of microRNAs (133b and 138) and Correlation with Echocardiographic Parameters in Patients with Alcoholic Cardiomyopathy

摘要

Introduction: Alcoholic Cardiomyopathy (ACM) is a disease with a difficult diagnosis.The real mechanisms related to its pathophysiology are not fully understood.Objective: The aims of this study were to investigate whether miR-133b and miR-138 could be associatedwith ACM.Methods: Forty-four patients were included comprising 24 with ACM and 20 with cardiomyopathiesof different etiologies (control group). Real-time PCR was performed to verify the relative expressionamong the studied groups. In the statistical analysis, the quantitative variables t-student Mann-Whitney and correlation of Pearson tests were carried out, while the qualitative variable comprisedthe chi-square test, with p<0.05 being considered statistically significant.Results: There was no association between clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of thegroups. The patients with ACM presented downregulation of miR-133b in comparison with controlpatients (p=0.004). On the other hand, for the miR-138, there was no association when the ACMgroup was compared with the control group. The presence of miR-133b among cases and controlswas not correlated with any of the echocardiographic parameters. However, the increase in the expressionof miR-138 was correlated with an increase in the ejection fraction (r=0.28, p=0.01) and thediameter of the left atrium (r=0.23, p=0.04) in patients with ACM.Conclusion: The downregulation of miR-133b might be a marker for ACM and, in addition, miR-138 could be used to correlate the increase in ejection fraction with and normalization of the diameterof the left atrium diameter in patients with this disease.