Expression of microRNAs (133b and 138) and Correlation with Echocardiographic Parameters in Patients with Alcoholic Cardiomyopathy

INTRODUCTION: Alcoholic Cardiomyopathy (ACM) is a disease with a difficult diagnosis. The real mechanisms related to its pathophysiology are not fully understood. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were to investigate whether miR-133b and miR-138 could be associated with ACM. METHODS: Forty-four patients were included comprising 24 with ACM and 20 with cardiomyopathies of different etiologies (control group). Real-time PCR was performed to verify the relative expression among the studied groups. In the statistical analysis, the quantitative variables t-student Mann- Whitney and correlation of Pearson tests were carried out, while the qualitative variable comprised the chi-square test, with p<0.05 being considered statistically significant. RESULTS: There was no association between clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of the groups. The patients with ACM presented downregulation of miR-133b in comparison with control patients (p=0.004). On the other hand, for the miR-138, there was no association when the ACM group was compared with the control group. The presence of miR-133b among cases and controls was not correlated with any of the echocardiographic parameters. However, the increase in the expression of miR-138 was correlated with an increase in the ejection fraction (r=0.28, p=0.01) and the diameter of the left atrium (r=0.23, p=0.04) in patients with ACM. CONCLUSION: The downregulation of miR-133b might be a marker for ACM and, in addition, miR- 138 could be used to correlate the increase in ejection fraction with and normalization of the diameter of the left atrium diameter in patients with this disease.