**Christiana Leimena and Hongyu Qiu \***

Department of Basic Sciences, Physiological Division, School of Medicine, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA 92324, USA; cleimena@llu.edu

**\*** Correspondence: hqiu@llu.edu; Tel.: +1-909-651-5894; Fax: +909-558-0119

Received: 31 January 2018; Accepted: 16 March 2018; Published: 21 March 2018

**Abstract:** Hypertension is a complex, multifactorial disease that involves the coexistence of multiple risk factors, environmental factors and physiological systems. The complexities extend to the treatment and management of hypertension, which are still the pursuit of many researchers. In the last two decades, various genes have emerged as possible biomarkers and have become the target for investigations of specialized drug design based on its risk factors and the primary cause. Owing to the growing technology of microarrays and next-generation sequencing, the non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have increasingly gained attention, and their status of redundancy has flipped to importance in normal cellular processes, as well as in disease progression. The ncRNA molecules make up a significant portion of the human genome, and their role in diseases continues to be uncovered. Specifically, the cellular role of these ncRNAs has played a part in the pathogenesis of hypertension and its progression to heart failure. This review explores the function of the ncRNAs, their types and biology, the current update of their association with hypertension pathology and the potential new therapeutic regime for hypertension.

**Keywords:** non-coding RNA; micro RNA; hypertension
