Microrna-224 up-regulation: a risk for complications in type 2 diabetes mellitus egyptian patients

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a major public health concern facing the world today. Recent studies suggested that the expression of biomolecules including microRNAs especially changes during the progression of T2DM, and its related complications, and is suggestive of disease pathology. This study aimed to investigate miRNA-224 expression among T2DM Egyptian patients in addition to evaluating its relationship to diabetic complications. A total of 205 individuals were subjected to this case-control study, cases were allocated to 100 T2DM patients and 105 healthy ones. The biochemical, anthropometric, psychometric parameters and miRNA-224 expression by Real-time PCR technique were measured. T2DM patients had significantly elevated levels of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C), fasting blood suger (FBS), post prandial blood sugar (PPBS), international normalization ratio (INR), creatinine, urea, cholesterol, triglyceride (TG) and low density lipoproteins (LDL) and significantly decreased high density lipoprotein (HDL) compared to healthy subjects. MiRNA-224 expression was significantly upregulated in T2DM patients compared to healthy individuals p (<0.001), MiRNA-224 showed superior diagnostic potential for diabetes and predicted diabetic risk among non-diabetic groups. Diabetic complications including retinopathy, neurological, eye complications, joint pain and cardiac disease were more frequent in T2DM patients than in control subjects. These differences were statistically significant at p (<0.05). Diabetic complications were more frequent with high expression of miRNA-224 >1.065. In conclusion, microRNA-224 could be considered as a novel diabetes-associated miRNA which is highly expressed in the serum of T2DM patients. Also it is highly expressed in patients who have diabetic complications at p (<0.05).