The Roles of circRNAs in Intervertebral Disc Degeneration: Inflammation, Extracellular Matrix Metabolism, and Apoptosis.

Hao Li,Baoshan Xu,Yongjin Li,Jianhua Li,Lilong Du,Lijun Tian,Zhenxin Huo,Maria Beatrice Morelli

doi:10.1155/2022/9550499

Abstract

Low back pain (LBP) is seriously harmful to human health and produces heavy economic burden. And most scholars hold that intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is the primary cause of LBP. With the study of IDD, aberrant expression of gene has become an important pathogenic factor of IDD. Circular RNAs (circRNAs), as a kind of noncoding RNA (ncRNA), participate in the regulation of genetic transcription and translation and further affect the expression of inflammatory cytokine, metabolism of extracellular matrix (ECM), the proliferation and apoptosis of cells, etc. Therefore, maybe it will become a new therapeutic target for IDD. At present, our understanding of the mechanism of circRNAs in IDD is limited. The purpose of this review is to summarize the mechanism and related signaling pathways of circRNAs in IDD reported in the past. Particularly, the roles of circRNAs in inflammation, ECM metabolism, and apoptosis are emphasized.

Highlights

Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most common symptoms of orthopedic patients all over the world and causes a heavy burden [1,2,3]
Li et al [87] proved that circ-FAM169A alleviate intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) development by promoting nucleus pulposus cells (NPCs) proliferation and extracellular matrix synthesis via the circ-FAM169A-miR-583 pathway. They believe that miR-583 can bind to downstream mRNA such as MMP2, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), and SRY-related high mobility group box 9 (Sox9) possibly to regulate the metabolism of ECM, NPC apoptosis, and proliferation
Almost all known circRNAs are involved in regulating the metabolism of ECM, indicating that ECM metabolism disorder may be an intermediate process in the pathological mechanism of IDD, and promoting ECM synthesis by circRNA may delay or even reverse the development of IDD, which may be a new breakthrough in the diagnosis and treatment of IDD in the future

Summary

Introduction

Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most common symptoms of orthopedic patients all over the world and causes a heavy burden [1,2,3]. According to the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD 2017), low back pain was regarded as the primary cause of years lived with disability (YLDs) counts in 2017 [4]. At present, more researches suggested that IDD is genetically driven [11,12,13,14]. They found that there are many significantly differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in IDD tissues compared with normal tissues [15,16,17,18].

The Mechanism of Intervertebral Disc Degeneration

The Roles of circRNAs in Intervertebral Disc Degeneration

Conclusion