Endocrine Abstracts

IntroductionEpidemiological studies have suggested that obesity during childhood increases the risk of developing metabolic comorbidities, such as type 2 diabetes, later in life. Childhood obesity is a complex disease whose molecular mechanisms are not completely elucidated. However, studies have demonstrated that approximately 65% of the variation associated with obesity is due to genetic factors. In this context, a system biology approach could contrib...

Context: Metabolic diseases affect millions of people in both developed and transition countries. In addition to genetic inheritance of risk alleles, emerging evidence has shown that these diseases are also linked to lifestyle and inherited epigenetic pattern interactions. The strong link between epigenetics and metabolism may offer attractive clinical applications to counteract and manage the escalating prevalence of metabolic diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellit...

Context: Obesity is a global epidemic and an independent risk factor for several metabolic disorders. Emerging evidence suggests a role for epigenetic factors, such as microRNAs (miRNAs), in the development of obesity. MiRNAs are small non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression. Moreover, circulating miRNAs are potential noninvasive biomarkers because they are stable in body fluids and can be detected using validated techniques, such as quantitative PCR. However, the identi...

Context: Since the exact cause of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) remains unclear, the detection of novel biomarkers is necessary to complement the information obtained from the presence of autoantibodies together with genetic and environmental risk factors. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small noncoding RNA molecules that negatively regulate gene expression. Changes in their expression were described in several pathological conditions, including autoimmune diseases. Circul...

Background and Aim: Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is an autoimmune disease resulting from the complex interaction among multiple genes, environmental factors and the immune system. Genome-wide association studies identified ERBB3 (Erb-b2 receptor tyrosine kinase 3) gene as a main susceptibility locus for T1DM. This gene encodes a member of the family of intracellular receptors of protein tyrosine kinases, which activates multiple signaling pathways including PI3K-Ak...

Introduction: Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is the major cause of end-stage renal disease; however, the pathogenesis of this disease is not fully understood. Currently available therapies are not totally efficacious in the treatment and prognosis of DKD, suggesting that further understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of this disease is necessary to improve its management. Recently, research on microRNAs (miRNAs) has become a hotspot because of the...

Background and Aims: The transcription factor Gli-similar 3 (GLIS3) plays a key role in the development and maintenance of pancreatic beta-cells as well as in the regulation of Insulin gene expression in adults. Accordingly, genome-wide association studies identified GLIS3 as a susceptibility locus for type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and glucose metabolism traits. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the association of the rs7020673 (G/C) and r...

Introduction: Viral pathogens seem to play a role in triggering the autoimmune destruction that leads to type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) development. Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) has been shown to recognize double-stranded RNA, a molecular signature of most viruses. It is expressed at high levels in pancreatic beta-cells and immune cells, suggesting a role for it in the T1DM pathogenesis. Therefore, the aim of this study was investigate if TLR3 polymorphisms are associ...

Introduction: Polymorphisms in genes that encode proteins of the innate immune system, such as the toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), could affect the immune response as well as the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Activated TLR4 induces expression of a spectrum of proinflammatory cytokines, which have been implicated in insulin resistance. Some studies have reported associations of the TLR4 Asp299Gly and Thr399Ile polymorphisms with T2DM. However, ot...

Introduction: Some studies have reported associations between five uncoupling protein (UCP) 1–3 polymorphisms and obesity. This paper describes a case–control study and a meta-analysis conducted to determine if the following polymorphisms are associated with obesity: −3826A/G (UCP1); −866G/A, Ala55Val and Ins/Del (UCP2) and −55C/T (UCP3).Methods: The case–control study enrolled 282 obese and 483...