Focus on Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) and MicroRNA “What Association”

Abstract

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is one of the most common chronic diseases in the world. According to the latest data from the International Diabetes Federation, it is estimated that around 700 million will develop DM by 2045! Glycemic control is crucial in the management of DM and for the prevention of microvascular “nephropathy, retinopathy, neuropathy” and macrovascular complications. Of all the microvascular complications, the one that aroused most interest in our descriptive study was Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), since, if left untreated, it leads to irreversible anatomical and functional damage. DR is the leading cause of blindness in working-age adults across the world. The pathogenesis of DR is multifactorial and the molecular mechanisms are still not fully understood. The treatment of DR essentially involves laser therapy, which is not always decisive due to absence and/or limited availability of successful drug therapies for these blinding disorders. The clinical diagnosis of DM often occurs late and this delay means that the chronic vascular complications associated with the disease are already present at the time of diagnosis. Therefore, this risk can be reduced if an early diagnosis is made. Hence the need to identify new specific biomarkers that can act as diagnostic and prognostic indicators of the disease. According to some studies, putative roles of small endogenous molecules of microRNAs as indicators of DR and associated complications are being considered. They carry out their silencing activity on a wide range of transcripts deriving from the expression of thousands of genes. There is evidence for the aberrant expression of microRNAs implicated in the onset of numerous pathologies. Since most of the genetic variations associated with diabetes are found in regions of the human genome that are not coding for proteins, it is worth studying those microRNAs involved in DR, both as possible therapeutic targets and as specific predictive diagnostic biomarkers. The present study aims to highlight the importance of some microRNAs and indicate those most implicated in the onset of DR, according to the literature, for the purpose of making a previous diagnosis of diabetes, in particular of DR.