LncRNA H19 promotes vascular inflammation and abdominal aortic aneurysm formation by functioning as a competing endogenous RNA

Abstract

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is accepted as a chronic vascular inflammatory disease. However, how the inflammatory response is regulated during AAA formation is not fully understood. This study was undertaken to determine whether the long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) H19 (H19) promotes AAA formation by enhancing aortic inflammation. qRT-PCR detected the upregulation of H19 in human and mouse AAA tissue samples. Co-staining for H19 and the macrophage marker MAC-2 showed that H19 was located in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and infiltrating aortic macrophages. In vivo overexpression of H19 increased vascular inflammation and induced AAA formation, which was supported by exacerbated aortic morphology, maximum aortic diameter values, elastin degradation, expression of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and macrophage chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), and macrophage infiltration. H19 suppression resulted in the opposite effects. A rescue experiment indicated that IL-6 neutralization significantly mitigated the aortic inflammation and AAA formation evoked by H19 overexpression. Luciferase reporter assays and ex vivo experiments using VSMCs and macrophages confirmed that H19 induced aneurysm formation in part via endogenous competition with the let-7a microRNA to induce the transcription of its target gene, IL-6. This mechanism was further validated by in vivo experiments using a mutant H19 that could not effectively bind let-7a. Collectively, our study revealed a pathogenic H19/let-7a/IL-6 inflammatory pathway in AAA formation, which offers a new potential therapeutic strategy for AAA.