Abstract:Objective To investigate the relationship between plasma microRNA-26a (miR-26a) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and macroangiopathy. Methods Eighty-one T2DM patients confirmed and treated from October 2017 to June 2018 were selected as study subjects and divided into two groups according to whether they had macroangiopathy or not. The patients with macroangiopathy (cerebral infarction, myocardial infarction, or carotid artery or lower extremity intima thickening or plaque formation measured by arterial ultrasound) were divided into T2DM+CVD group(n=42), and the patients without macroangiopathy were divided into DM group(n=39). Thirty-two healthy people were selected as control(NC) group in the same period. The levels of blood glucose and blood lipid and the expression levels of miR-26a in plasma were detected respectively by automatic biochemical analyzer and real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) to analyze the difference of miR-26a expression among three groups. Results There was no significant difference in general data among three groups (P>0.05). Compared with NC group, the serum levels of glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), fasting blood glucose (FPG), fasting C-peptide (FC-P), C-reactive protein(CRP), total cholesterol (TC), low density lipoprotein-choesterol (LDL-C) significantly increased in T2DM group and T2DM+CVD group (P<0.05). There were significant differences among three groups in the relative expression of plasma miR-26a (F=34.81, P<0.01), and it was increased according to the sequence of NC group, T2DM group and T2DM+CVD group. Pearson correlation analysis showed that miR-26a was positively correlated with HbA1c,LDL-C、TC and FPG(r=0.469、0.276、0.244、0.304,P<0.05) and was negatively correlated with FC-P and course of disease( r=-0.473, -0.264, P<0.05), but not with age, body mass index (BMI), systolic pressure (SBP),diastolic pressure (DBP),and triglyceride (TG).Conclusion The expression level of miR-26a increased gradiently in the order of NC, T2DM and T2DM + CVD, suggesting that miR-26a is closely related to macroangiopathy in T2DM and may be regulated by glycometabolism.