Circular RNA hsa_circ_0014243 may serve as a diagnostic biomarker for essential hypertension

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have a great potential as clinical biomarkers; however, specific circRNAs with a diagnostic value for essential hypertension (EH) largely remain to be identified. In the present study, the potential application of (hsa)_circ_0014243, which was identified to be significantly upregulated in whole blood samples of EH patients in a previous microarray profiling study by our group, in the diagnosis of EH was evaluated. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis was performed to determine the expression levels of hsa_circ_0014243 and hsa-microRNA (miR)-10a-5p in a total of 178 blood samples collected from 89 healthy controls and 89 patients diagnosed with EH. Divergent primers were designed for circRNAs, while conventional primers were used for miRs. Independent-samples t-tests and bivariate correlation analyses were performed to analyze the association between clinical factors influencing EH and hsa_circ_0014243 expression levels. A receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve was generated to estimate the diagnostic value of hsa_circ_0014243 for EH. Finally, the expression levels of circRNAs and miRNAs were combined to propose a possible prediction model for EH. The results indicated that hsa_circ_0014243 was upregulated in whole blood samples of EH patients compared with that in the controls (P