ceRNA network deregulated in ischemic heart failure patients

Differential expression analyses of mRNA and circRNA were performed in ischemic non end-stage heart failure (HF) left ventricle samples and in healthy controls from individuals not affected from cardiovascular dieseases. The aim of the study was to build an HF regulatory RNA network. Using expression data from HF deregulated microRNAs (Greco et al.,Diabetes 2012 Jun;61(6):1633-41) a total of 1031 circRNA-mirNA-mRNA interactions were identified, and proposed as competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis identified among the top enriched categories several relevant pathways such as Ubiquitin mediated proteolysis, apelin signaling pathway, MAPK pathway, Cell cycle, Longevity regulating pathway, FoxO and MTOR signaling pathways. RNA was extracted using TRIzol (Life Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.) from left ventricles tissues collected from 20 heart failure patients and from 20 controls.