Association of Mir-146a Expression and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Meta-Analysis

Although deregulation of mir-146a has been reported in type 2 diabetes repeatedly, the direction of deregulation events (up or down) remained to be inconsistent in literatures. therefore, in this study we performed a metaanalysis on the possible association between mir-146a expression levels and type 2 diabetes. a systematic literature searching of pubmed, isi web of science and google scholar was performed up to the end of september 2016. finally, a total of 12 studies including 344 diabetic patients and 316 controls were selected for meta-analysis. all statistical analysis was performed using the metafor package with r software. moreover, publication bias was assessed by egger’s and sensitivity analysis was applied on the meta-analysis. the results are presented as log10 odds ratios (logors), 95% confidence intervals (ci) with relevant p values. the results revealed that mir-146a was downregulated in type 2 diabetes cases compared with normal subjects (p=0.01, logor:-4.76, 95% ci:-8.41, -1.11). furthermore, sub-group analysis showed that the association between mir- 146a expression levels and type 2 diabetes in whole blood (p<0.001) and pbmcs (p<0.001) samples were significant. however, this association was not significant in the serum (p=0.67) and plasma (p=0.90) samples. our finding suggests that mir-146a downregulation could be associated with type 2 diabetes susceptibility. further investigations with larger sample size are required to evaluate this association in the type 2 diabetes pathogenesis.