Endocrine Abstracts

The prevalence of prediabetes is increasing in the global population and its metabolic derangements may expose to a higher risk to develop type 2 diabetes (T2D) and its cardiovascular burden. Lifestyle modifications might have considerable benefits on ameliorating metabolic status. In light of this scenario, preventive programmes are focusing on the modification of lifestyle that notoriously decreases the incidence of T2D, to reduce the risk and delay T2D and its burden: Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) recommended healthy habits (diet and physical activity), avoiding smoking, alcohol, and stress as hints to reduce the risk to develop T2D. Intensive lifestyle intervention was able to reduce the incidence of T2D by 58% over 3 years Alternative biomarkers, such as circulating miR-21, has been recently discovered associated with dysglycemia. Here we evaluated, in a longitudinal cohort of dysglycemic population the relation between the circulating miR-21/ROS/HNE levels and the habit-intervention (HI) after 1 year of follow-up.

Methods: 1506 subjects from DIAPASON study were screened based on the Findrisc score. 531 subjects with Findrisc ≥9 were selected for dysglycemia (ADA criteria) and tested for circulating miR-21, ROS and HNE levels, as damaging-axis. 207 dysglycemic subjects were re-evaluated after a habit intervention (HI), 1-year later. Repeated measures tests were used to evaluate changes from baseline to 1-year of follow-up. Furthermore, linear regression and logistic regression models were implemented to evaluate the association between glycemic parameters and miR-21/ROS/HNE.

Results: We observed, after HI, a significant reduction of miR-21/ROS/HNE axis in dysglycemic subjects, concomitantly with ameliorating of metabolic parameters, including insulin resistance, BMI, microalbuminuria, reactive hyperemia index and skin fluorescence. Significant positive interaction was observed between miR-21 axis with glycaemic parameters after HI. Lower miR-21 levels after HI, strongly associated with a reduction of glycemic damaging-axis, in particular, within-subjects with values of 2hPG<200 mg/dL.

Conclusions: Our findings demonstrated that HI influenced the epigenetic changes related to miR-21 axis, and sustain the concept of reversibility from dysglycemia. These data support the usefulness of novel biological approaches for monitoring glycemia as well as provide a screening tool for preventive programmes.