arterial calcification is regulated via an mir204dnmt3a regulatory circuit both in vitro and in female mice arterial calcification is a common cardiovascular disease that initiates from a process of osteoblastic differentiation of vascular smooth muscle cells vsmcs accumulating evidence has demonstrated that micrornas play an important role in regulating arterial calcification mir204 was significantly downregulated in calcified human renal arteries from patients with uremia calcified arteries of mice due to 56 nephrectomy with a highphosphate diet 56 ntp and in vsmcs induced by high phosphate concentration the overexpression of mir204 alleviated the osteoblastic differentiation of vsmcs bisulphite sequencing pcr revealed that cpg sites upstream of mir204 dna were hypermethylated in calcified vsmcs in calcified arteries of mice due to 56 ntp and in calcified renal artery tissues from patients with uremia moreover increased dnmt3a resulted in the hypermethylation of mir204 in high phosphate concentrationinduced vsmcs whereas 5aza2deoxycytidine could restore the expression of mir204 in high phosphate concentrationinduced vsmcs moreover we found that dnmt3a was the target of mir204 and the methylation ratio of mir204 was decreased significantly meaning that the expression of mir204 was restored when dnmt3a was knocked down by using dnmt3a small interfering rna resulting in abrogation of the effect of high phosphate concentration on vsmc calcification the progress of arterial calcification is regulated by the mir204dnmt3a regulatory circuit