Circulating expression levels of CircHIPK3 and CDR1as circular-RNAs in type 2 diabetes patients

Recent investigations suggested that deregulated levels of Circular RNAs (circRNAs) could be associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) pathogenesis. Accordingly, this study aimed to determine the expression levels of circulating CircHIPK3, CDR1as and their correlation with biochemical parameters in patients with T2DM, pre-diabetes and control subjects.

The expression of circRNAs in peripheral blood was determined using QRT-PCR in 70 patients with T2DM, 60 pre-diabetes and in 69 age and sex matched healthy controls. Moreover, bioinformatics tools were applied to explore and predict the potential interactions between circRNAs and other non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Our analysis revealed that the expression level of CircHIPK3 was significantly elevated in T2DM patients compared to healthy participants (P < 0.001) and pre-diabetes subjects (P = 0.018). In addition, ROC analysis suggested that at the cutoff value of 0.24 and the sensitivity and specificity of 50% and 88.4%, respectively, CircHIPK3 could distinguish between T2DM patients and control subjects. Furthermore, it was observed that the expression level of CDR1as is higher in pre-diabetic individuals than healthy individuals (P = 0.004). Finally, Spearman correlation analysis showed that there was a significant correlation between CircHIPK3 and CDR1as expression levels and clinical and anthropometrical parameters such as BMI, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, HbA1c and fasting blood glucose (P < 0.005).

The data of this study provided evidence that the expression levels of CircHIPK3, CDR1as increased in T2DM and pre-diabetes subjects, respectively.