Determination of non-coding RNA levels in chronic venous insufficiency and its effects on disease severity

The chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) is a major health problem that develops due to venous hypertension due to pathological valve insufficiency or venous obstruction and causes serious complications such as telangiectasia, painful varicose veins and skin ulcers. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the effect of non-coding RNAs in the blood circulation and varicose veins of patients diagnosed with CVI on severity of the disease. In this study, it was aimed to determine the non-coding RNAs expression levels in the leukocytes and varicose veins of patients with CVI and their associations with CVI.. For this purpose, expression levels of candidate non-coding RNAs in varicose vein tissues and blood samples (n=56) taken from patients with moderate and severe symptoms with CVI, and normal saphenous vein tissues (n=8, during coronary by-pass operation) and blood samples (n=37) taken from the control group, were determined by quantitative RT-PCR and compared statistically with clinical data. In this study, expression level of lncRNA-AK021444 increased 4.5 times in leukocytes (p=0.015) while decreased 12.8 times in venous tissues (p=0.0001) of CVI patients compared to the control group. Besides, expression level of miR-222 increased 7.4 times in venous tissues of CVI patients (p=0.016). In addition, it was determined that expression levels of miR-202 decreased 32 times (p=0.0001) and lncRNA-GAS5 decreased 51 times (p=0.0001) in leukocytes of CVI patient group. When subdivided accoring to sex, expression levels of non-coding RNAs were determined to be in same profile as whole study groups. In the ROC analysis, it was determined that miR-202 and GAS5, which have decreased expression levels, and AK021444, which has increased expression level in leukocytes, could be candidate biomarkers for the diagnosis of CVI. As a result, it was shown for the first time three of the four candidate non-coding RNAs that investigated in this study could be biomarker candidates that could be used in diagnosis. More detailed analyzes are needed to determine the role of miR-222 and AK021444 in the pathogenesis of the disease due to varying expression levels in venous vascular tissues with CVI.