Exercise training in hypertension: Role of microRNAs

Abstract

Hypertension is a complex disease that constitutes an important public health problem and demands many studies in order to understand the molecular mechanisms involving his pathophysiology. Therefore, an increasing number of studies have been conducted and new therapies are continually being discovered. In this context, exercise training has emerged as an important non-pharmacological therapy to treat hypertensive patients, minimizing the side effects of pharmacological therapies and frequently contributing to allow pharmacotherapy to be suspended. Several mechanisms have been associated with the pathogenesis of hypertension, such as hyperactivity of the sympathetic nervous system and renin-angiotensin aldosterone system, impaired endothelial nitric oxide production, increased oxygen-reactive species, vascular thickening and stiffening, cardiac hypertrophy, impaired angiogenesis, and sometimes genetic predisposition. With the advent of microRNAs (miRNAs), new insights have been added to the perspectives for the treatment of this disease, and exercise training has been shown to be able to modulate the miRNAs associated with it. Elucidation of the relationship between exercise training and miRNAs in the pathogenesis of hypertension is fundamental in order to understand how exercise modulates the cardiovascular system at genetic level. This can be promising even for the development of new drugs. This article is a review of how exercise training acts on hypertension by means of specific miRNAs in the heart, vascular system, and skeletal muscle.

Keywords: Exercise training, Hypertension, MicroRNA, Heart, Vascular system, Macrocirculation, Microcirculation, Muscles, Angiogenesis

Core tip: Numerous studies have shown that exercise training exerts beneficial effects on hypertension. Thus, several important studies have established links between exercise training, hypertension and the post-transcriptional regulators known as miRNAs. It is interesting to note that exercise training helps to control hypertension through these regulators, by promoting changes in the cardiovascular system towards normality. This review summarizes the way in which exercise training acts on the cardiovascular system to control the side effects of hypertension on the heart, macro- and microcirculation, and skeletal muscles.