Bisphenol A accelerates the vascular complications in patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus through vascular...

Environmental pollutant Bisphenol A (BPA) strongly interacts with insulin resistance, which leads to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Uncontrolled glucose levels in both blood and urine develops vascular complications in T2DM patients. However, glucose-controlled diabetic patients are also affected by vascular complications due to vascular calcification, and there is a lack of clinically relevant data on BPA levels available in patients with T2DM-associated vascular complications due to vascular calcification. Therefore, we measured BPA levels in T2DM-associated vascular complications and correlated systemic BPA levels with vascular calcification-related gene expression.

This study included 120 participants with T2DM and its associated vascular complications. Serum and urinary BPA were estimated using an ELISA kit, and gene expression of the study participants in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) was studied with quantitative real-time PCR.

Serum and urinary BPA levels were higher in T2DM and its associated vascular complications with CVD and DN patients compared to control. Both Serum and urinary BPA had higher significance with Sirt1 (p < 0.001, p < 0.001), Runx2 (p < 0.01, p < 0.001) and IL-1beta (p < 0.001, p < 0.02) gene expression in the study groups, but, TNF-alpha significant with Serum BPA (p < 0.04), not urinary BPA (p < 0.31).

BPA levels were positively correlated with lower Sirt1 and increased Runx2 in T2DM-associated vascular complications patients. Also, higher expression of IL-1beta and TNF-alpha was observed in T2DM-associated vascular complications patients. Our study is the first to associate BPA levels with vascular calcification in patients with T2DM and its associated vascular complications.