Circular RNAs(CircRNAs), a new class of non-coding RNAs, possess significant capabilities of gene regulation and are disrupted in various diseases, including diabetes mellitus (DM). However, the underlying mechanism of CircRNAs in DM and diabetic complications remains illusive. A recent study published by Liu et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 116:7455-7464, 2019) shown that a novel diabetic retinopathy (DR)-associated CircRNA cPWWP2A, which could act as a competing endogenous RNA interacting with miR-579 to promote the DR-induced retinal vascular dysfunction through up-regulating the expression of Angiopoietin 1, Occludin, and SIRT1. Their findings may provide new insight into the potential use of CircRNA cPWWP2A for the targeted therapy of DR. However, those promising findings may need to be further evaluated detailedly for the following reason. (1) This study doesn't well clarify why the most significantly up-regulated CircRNA mmu _circ_0000254 the fold change of which is 160.581 is excluded,while the cPWWP2A the fold change of which is only 3.487 is chosen. (2) It is difficult to conclude that cPWWP2A competing with miR-579 only by the analysis of colocalization in pericytes.

中文翻译：

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CircRNA cPWWP2A：糖尿病的新兴参与者。

环状RNA（CircRNA）是一类新型的非编码RNA，具有重要的基因调控能力，并在包括糖尿病（DM）在内的多种疾病中被破坏。然而，在糖尿病和糖尿病并发症中CircRNAs的潜在机制仍然是一个幻想。Liu等人发表的最新研究。（Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 116：7455-7464，2019）表明，一种新型的糖尿病视网膜病变（DR）相关的CircRNA cPWWP2A可以作为竞争性内源RNA与miR-579相互作用，从而促进DR诱导的视网膜血管功能障碍通过上调血管生成素1，Occludin和SIRT1的表达。他们的发现可能为CircRNA cPWWP2A在DR的靶向治疗中的潜在用途提供新的见解。但是，由于以下原因，可能需要进一步详细评估那些有希望的发现。（1）这项研究并不能很好地阐明为什么将倍数变化为160.581的CircRNA上调幅度最大的CircRNA mmu _circ_0000254排除在外，而选择倍数变化仅为3.487的cPWWP2A。（2）仅通过分析周细胞中的共定位，很难得出cPWWP2A与miR-579竞争的结论。