Elevated Circulating Levels of Carnal ENST00000550337.1 Are Associated with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Chinese Women

Objectives: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine and metabolic disease. Some studies reported that the development of PCOS may be closely related to insulin resistance (IR). Interestingly, the long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) ENST00000550337.1 in peripheral blood is mainly involved in glucose metabolism. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to explore the relationship between lncRNA ENST00000550337.1 level and PCOS patients.

Materials and methods: Seventy-five PCOS patients and 72 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. We used qRT-PCR to detect the expression level of lncRNA ENST00000550337.1 in peripheral blood leukocytes from patients with PCOS. We also investigated potential relationships between lncRNA ENST00000550337.1 and the endocrine parameters in PCOS.

Results: We observed that the expression of lncRNA ENST00000550337.1 in PCOS patients was significantly higher than that in the control subjects and positively correlated with PCOS occurrence, waist circumference, waist-hip ratio, IR, fasting insulin levels, and blood glucose. The expression of lnc RNA ENST00000550337.1 was positively correlated with PCOS (p = 0.003). There were independent correlations between IR and expression of lncRNA ENST00000550337.1 in patients with PCOS. Patients with elevated lncRNA ENST00000550337.1 expression had significantly increased PCOS risk after adjusting for age and BMI. LncRNA ENST00000550337.1 expression level provided a sensitivity of 81.3% and a specificity of 78.1% with a threshold value of 6.4648 for the prediction of PCOS. The area under the ROC was 0.813.

Limitations: There are some limitations to this study. First, the sample size was limited and the causal relationship between lncRNA ENST00000550337.1 and PCOS was not investigated due to the cross-sectional study design. Second, HOMA-IR does not fully accurately reflect the IR of patients.

Conclusions: The present study indicated that lnc RNA ENST00000550337.1 was related to PCOS occurrence, and elevated levels may be a risk factor for PCOS women. In addition, lncRNA ENST00000550337.1 might promote PCOS development partially by increasing IR and can be used as a potential molecular marker in patients with PCOS.