ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the expression and clinical value of plasma miR-93 and miR-21 in patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR).Methods Ninety-eight patients with DR (DR group),40 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM group) and 40 healthy subjects (control group) from January 2015 to March 2017 were enrolled in this study.And the expression levels of miR-93 and miR-21 in the plasma were detected by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) techniques.ROC curve was used to evaluate the values of miR-93 and miR-21 for the diagnosis of DR,and the risk factors of DR were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analysis.Finally,Pearson correlation analysis was utilized to evaluate the correlation of plasma miR-93 and miR-21 with biochemical indicators including total cholesterol (TC),low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C),triglyceride (TG) and creatinine (Cr),blood urea nitrogen (BUN),urinary albumin/creatinine (UACR),glycosylated hemoglobin (HbAlc) and fasting blood glucose (FPG) in DR patients.Results Both DR and DM groups had significantly higher UACR,HbAlc and FPG than the control group (all P ＜ 0.05),and the DR group was significantly higher than DM group (all P ＜ 0.05).The expression levels of plasma miR-93 and miR-21 in the DR group (1.84 ±0.27,1.95 ±0.34) were significantly higher than those in the DM group (1.09 ± 0.13,1.13 ± 0.18) and the control group (1.02 ± 0.08,1.08 ±0.16),and there were statistical differences (all P ＜ 0.05).Meanwhile,the levels of plasma miR-93 and miR-21 in PDR group (2.31 ± 0.57,2.28 ± 0.61) were significantly higher than those in NPDR group (1.40 ± 0.21,1.52 ± 0.24),and there were statistical differences (all P ＜ 0.05).The area under the curve (95％ CI) of plasma miR-93,miR-21 and both indicators for DR diagnosis was 0.892 (0.824-0.961),0.836 (0.770-0.905),0.937 (0.868-0.992),respectively.Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that UACR,HbAlc,FPG,miR-93 and miR-21 were independent risk factors for DR.Correlation analysis showed that plasma miR-93 and miR-21 were positively correlated with UACR,HbAlc and FPG in the patients with DR (all P ＜ 0.01),and miR-93 was positively correlated with miR-21 (P ＜ 0.01).Conclusion Plasma miR93 and miR-21 are closely related to the initiation and development of DR and can be used as the potential markers for the diagnosis of DR.