3.10 Curcumin
Curcumin is the main active ingredient of Curcuma longa L. and is mainly extracted from dried powdered turmeric. There is evidence that curcumin can modulate the inflammatory response and alleviate inflammatory diseases like atherosclerosis (F. Y. Chen et al., 2015; Hasan et al., 2014). Studies found that the activated miR-126-3p from endothelial cells and VSMCs played a key role in reducing vascular calcification (Zeng et al., 2021) and curcumin upregulates miR-126-3p expression (S. Li et al., 2021). Therefore, we infer that miR-126-3p may be one of the targets of curcumin in the treatment of atherosclerosis. LncRNA MIAT has been shown to aggravate the atherosclerotic damage through the activation of PI3K/Akt signaling pathway (G. Sun, Li, & Ji, 2019). A study found that reduced expression of MIAT contributes to the protective effect of curcumin on atherosclerosis. MIAT regulates miR-124 by interacting with enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2), thereby altering endothelial cell apoptosis and proliferation (Ouyang, Zhang, Xiang, Yao, & Fang, 2022). In addition, curcumin markedly suppresses miR-125a-5p and upregulates SIRT6 in macrophages, thereby regulating the ABCA1 expression and promoting cholesterol efflux of macrophages (C. Tan, Zhou, Wen, & Xiao, 2021).