Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is one of the most common cardiovascular diseases that leads to high mortality and morbidity globally. Various therapeutic targets for AMI have been investigated in recent years, including the non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). NcRNAs, a class of RNA molecules that typically do not code proteins, are divided into several subgroups. Among them, microRNAs (miRNAs) are widely studied for their modulation of several pathological aspects of AMI, including cardiomyocyte apoptosis, inflammation, angiogenesis and fibrosis. It has emerged that long ncRNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs (circRNAs) also regulate these processes via interesting mechanisms. However, the regulatory functions of ncRNAs in AMI and their underlying functional mechanisms have not been systematically described. In this review, we summarize the recent findings involving ncRNA actions in AMI and briefly describe the novel mechanisms of these ncRNAs, highlighting their potential application as therapeutic targets in AMI.
Keywords: acute myocardial infarction; angiogenesis; apoptosis; circular RNAs; fibrosis; inflammation; long non-coding RNAs; microRNAs.
© 2016 The Authors. Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Foundation for Cellular and Molecular Medicine.