**Table 4.** lncRNA associated with essential hypertension.


 hypertensive; normotensive; sensitive; sat-resistant; single polymorphism; cells; SS: salt sensitive; SR: salt resistant; HUVEC: human umbilical vein endothelial cells; PWV: pulse wave velocity; Wky: Wistar-Kyoto rats; SHR: spontaneous hypertensive rats;n/iCMIT: normal/increased carotid intima-media thickness.

#### *Int. J. Mol. Sci.* **2018**, *19*, 927

#### **5. Detection of Non-Coding RNAs**

miRNAs and lncRNAs have the potential to be biomarkers and targets for therapy design. Drug design on miRNA and lncRNA replacement, modulation and enhancement is a promising outlook. In the last decade, studies have reported that miRNAs and lncRNAs are packaged in microvesicles, exosomes, apoptotic bodies, high-density lipoproteins (HDL) or Ago2 as RNA-binding proteins and carried in the bloodstream [34–37,92,101,102]. This makes the miRNAs protected from degradation by RNase activity in the blood. The functions of these circulating ncRNAs are mainly to communicate to neighboring or remote target cells and to provide gene expression regulation. An example for the existence of the transfer of miRNAs in extracellular microvesicles is the communication between endothelial cells and the VSMCs of miRNAs such as miR-143 and miR-145 [34]. The facts that miRNAs and lncRNAs can be detected in circulation (serum and plasma) and urine and that they are stable in blood during transportation and storage enable sample collection to be simpler, faster and non-invasive with no requirement of tissue collection. Despite this promising advantage, more research is required to detect the origin (cell/tissue type) of these circulating miRNAs.
