Dysregulation of miR-637 serves as a diagnostic biomarker in patients with carotid artery stenosis and predicts the occurrence of the cerebral ischemic event

The present research aims to explore the relationship between circulating microRNA and carotid artery stenosis (CAS). To evaluate the diagnostic significance of miR-637 in CAS patients and its potential predictive value for cerebral ischemia events through clinical studies. Quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to verify the differences in serum miR-637 between enrolled 97 CAS patients and 90 healthy individuals. Logistic regression analysis of the correlation between the level of miR-637 and the degree of carotid artery stenosis. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve evaluated the diagnostic significance of miR-637 in identifying CAS patients from healthy individuals. Kaplan-Meier survival and Cox regression were used to evaluate the potential predictive ability of serum miR-637 levels during follow-up for cerebral ischemia events. Serum miR-637 of CAS patients was significantly reduced which was a good indicator of severe carotid stenosis (P < 0.001). Reduced miR-637 can identify CAS patients from healthy individuals, demonstrating strong diagnostic capabilities. Furthermore, Kaplan-Meier analysis confirmed that the lower miR-637 levels in CAS, the more cerebral ischemia events (log-rank, P = 0.035), and the Multivariate Cox regressions confirmed that miR-637 was an independent predictor of CAS patients (HR = 0.073, 95%CI = 0.017-0.313, P < 0.001). We confirmed that serum miR-637 in CAS patients was significantly reduced. And reduced miR-637 was not only a potentially reliable biomarker for the diagnosis of CAS but also a useful indicator for predicting future cerebral ischemic events.