Serum MicroRNA-27b as a Screening Biomarker for Left Ventricular Hypertrophy

MicroRNA-27b (miR-27b) is frequently upregulated in pressure-overloaded hypertrophic hearts. The clinical implications of aberrant circulating miR-27b in the diagnosis and management of left ventricular hypertrophy warrant study. We investigated whether serum miR-27b is a biomarker for left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). We used stem-loop reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction techniques to analyze serum miR-27b levels in 200 hypertensive patients with LVH, 100 hypertensive patients without LVH, and 100 healthy volunteers. We found that serum miR-27b levels were significantly higher in the hypertensive patients with LVH than in the hypertensive patients without LVH and in the healthy volunteers. Upon receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, serum miR-27b had an area under the curve of 0.885 with 91% sensitivity and 73% specificity in distinguishing hypertensive patients with LVH from healthy volunteers (P=0.021), and an area under the curve of 0.818 with 79.1% sensitivity and 70.3% specificity in distinguishing hypertensive patients with LVH from those without LVH (P=0.036). We conclude that circulating miR-27b might serve as a specific, noninvasive biomarker in screening for LVH.