Background: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the most common microvascular complications in patients with diabetes. MicroRNA (miRNA, miR) is closely related to the formation, development and pathophysiology of DN. We aimed to investigate whether miR-193a-3p could be used as a potential biomarker for the diagnosis of DN.

Methods: Plasma samples were collected from all the participants. TaqMan Low Density Array analysis was employed to obtain the miRNA profiles of plasma samples, and qRT-PCR was used to confirm the result. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were employed to evaluate the specificity and sensitivity of miR-193a-3p for predicting DN.

Results: The expression of miR-193a-3p and miR-320c were elevated and miR-27a-3p was decreased in DN patients compared to patients with type 2 diabetes and healthy controls. We found that, in DN patients, the elevated miR-193a-3p expression had a negative correlation with the level of evaluate glomerular filtration rate, while a positive correlation with the level of proteinuria. We further demonstrated that miR-193a-3p could be employed to distinguish patients with DN. The Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the high expression of miR-193a-3p significantly shortened the dialysis-free survival of DN patients.

Conclusion: In conclusion, miR-193a-3p is involved in DN pathogenesis and may serve as a potentially novel diagnostic biomarker for DN.

背景：糖尿病肾病（DN）是糖尿病患者中最常见的微血管并发症之一。MicroRNA（miRNA，miR）与DN的形成，发展和病理生理密切相关。我们旨在研究miR-193a-3p是否可用作诊断DN的潜在生物标记。

方法：从所有参与者收集血浆样品。使用TaqMan低密度阵列分析获得血浆样品的miRNA图谱，并使用qRT-PCR确认结果。接收者操作特征（ROC）曲线用于评估miR-193a-3p预测DN的特异性和敏感性。

结果：与2型糖尿病患者和健康对照组相比，DN患者中miR-193a-3p和miR-320c的表达升高，而miR-27a-3p的表达降低。我们发现，在DN患者中，升高的miR-193a-3p表达与评估肾小球滤过率水平呈负相关，而与蛋白尿水平呈正相关。我们进一步证明了miR-193a-3p可用于区分DN患者。Kaplan-Meier分析表明，miR-193a-3p的高表达显着缩短了DN患者的无透析生存期。

结论：总之，miR-193a-3p参与了DN的发病机理，并可能作为DN的潜在新型诊断生物标志物。