Extracellular Vesicle Encapsulated MicroRNAs in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Are Affected by Metformin Treatment

Abstract

Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) in circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs), have emerged as a source of potential biomarkers for various pathophysiological conditions, including metabolic disorders such as diabetes. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), is the most prevalent form of diabetes in the USA, with 30 million diagnosed patients. Identifying miRNA biomarkers that can be used to assess response to glucose lowering treatments would be useful. Using patient plasma samples from a subset of the Danish Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract (MetaHIT) cohort, we characterized miRNAs from whole plasma, plasma-derived EVs, and EV-depleted plasma by small RNA-sequencing to identify T2DM associated miRNAs. We identified several miRNAs that exhibited concentration changes between controls and non-metformin treated T2DM patients and we validated a subset of these by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The results showed that the concentrations of many T2DM-affected miRNAs in EV (but not in whole or EV-depleted plasma) decreased to levels close to those of healthy controls following metformin treatment. Among other potential uses of these differentially expressed miRNAs, some might be useful in assessing the response to metformin in T2DM patients.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
May 07, 2019
Source ID
10.3390/jcm8050617

Entities

People

  • Alton Etheridge
  • David Galas
  • Kai Wang
  • Oluf Pedersen
  • Taek-kyun Kim
  • Torben Hansen
  • Trine Nielsen
  • Vikas Ghai

Organizations

  • Defense Threat Reduction Agency
  • Foundation for the National Institutes of Health
  • Novo Nordisk Fonden
  • United States Department of Defense

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Biology

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