Renal cortex microRNA expression differences between hypertensive and normotensive patients

Identification of renal cortex microRNAs whose expression differs between male individuals with high blood pressure and normal blood pressure using Agilent Human miRNA Microarrays (V3, release 12.0). The Silesian Renal Tissue Bank, a collection of tissues which aimed to investigate candidate genes in human cardiovascular disease, was used to analyze the miRNA expression in hypertensive and normotensive patients. Approximately 1 cm3 of tissue from the healthy (unaffected by cancer) pole of the kidney was obtained immediately after surgery and transferred into containers with RNAlater (Ambion) and preserved at 70°C before mRNA extraction, which used a commercially available assay (RNeasy, Qiagen). Medulla and cortex were separated and individual RNA was obtained for each of them. No pooling was performed. After extraction of RNA, cRNA was prepared and arrays performed using Agilent Human miRNA Microarrays (V3, release 12.0) performed at the Ramaciotti Gene Function Analysis facility, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.