The emerging role of microRNAs in cardiovascular disease

Cardiovascular disease remains the most prevalent cause of human morbidity and mortality in ageing Western societies. Basic and translational scientific efforts have focused on the development and improvement of diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to limit the burden of associated diseases, such as stroke and myocardial infarction, and diabetes mellitus and arterial hypertension. Progress in molecular medicine and biology has unravelled a complex epigenetic and post-transcriptional gene-regulating machinery in humans which may limit disease development. An increasing number of attractive molecular strategies, which use the potential of modulating noncoding RNAs, have surfaced over the last decade. Currently, the most extensively studied gene-regulating RNA subspecies are microRNAs, which have been shown to adjust the translational output of coding transcripts by enforcing their degradation and inhibiting their translation into protein. Key findings indicate that microRNAs act as crucial regulators in the majority of human pathologies. Thus, recent research has focused on detecting and modulating microRNAs for therapeutic and biomarker purposes. This review focuses on main and repeated discoveries regarding the role and the therapeutic and biomarker feasibility of microRNAs during cardiovascular disease development and exacerbation.