A study on circulating micro RNAs in Egyptian diabetic patients with/without risk of cardiovascular complications

Abstract

Egypt is ranked number nine among the top 10 countries of people with diabetes. The long term macro and microvascular diabetic complications are responsible for the diabetes- associated mortality. Thus, improving the quality of diabetic patients’ life requires early prediction and prevention of chronic diabetic complications. Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs), which are short RNA molecules acting as regulators of protein expression in eukaryotic cells, had a great attention as novel potential biomarkers in several diseases. The objective of the current study was to evaluate serum levels of miR-126, mi-R133, miR-96 and miR-93 in Egyptian T2DM patients with/without cardiovascular complications. The present study compromised 18 healthy controls and 53 Egyptian diabetic patients divided into: 13 diabetic patients without diabetic cardiovascular complications and 40 patients with risk for diabetic cardiovascular complications. The expression levels of mature miRNAs were detected in all patients and controls sera using quantitative RT- PCR. Serum levels of miR-133, miR-126 and miR-93 were significantly reduced while serum miR-96 was significantly increased in T2DM patients without risk for cardiovascular complications compared to the healthy controls, which may play a role in developing diabetes and differentiating patients with a high likelihood of developing diabetes from healthy controls. Moreover, there was a significant decrease in miR-133 and miR-126 levels between the two diabetic groups, which suggests that both miRNAs could be useful for prediction of cardiovascular disease in T2DM Egyptian patients.