VEGF-B is involved in diabetic peripheral neuropathy in patients with type 2 diabetes

Abstract

Aims: This study aims to explore the potential role of vascular endothelial growth factor-B (VEGF-B) in the pathogenesis of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). The expression of VEGFRs were reanalysed by using gene arrays of peripheral nerve samples from mouse models of DPN retrieved from the GEO database. 213 T2D patients as well as 31 healthy individuals were recruited. The serum VEGF-B was detected and its relationship with DPN was analysed. The elevated VEGFR1 was the only change of VEGFR gene expression in the peripheral nerve from mouse models of DPN. The level of serum VEGF-B in T2D patients with DPN was higher than that in T2D patients without DPN and healthy people. Analysis of correlation and binary logistic regression confirmed that the increased serum VEGF-B level was an independent risk factor of DPN in T2D patients. VEGF-B-VEGFR1 signaling pathway may be involved in the development of DPN.

Keywords:

• Diabetic peripheral neuropathy
• vascular endothelial growth factor-B
• type 2 diabetes mellitus
• vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 1
• diabetic complications

Authors contributions

Study design, statistical analysis, conception and manuscript draft: Ruonan Zhou. Data interpretation: Yingying Xue, Ziwei Zhu, Pingyuan Xu, Lixuan Shen, Ziwei Wang, Yingying Xiang, Yue Cao. Performance of ELISA tests: Xizhong Yu. Funding acquisition, critical revision and supervision: Wenbin Shang. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by the open projects of the discipline of Chinese Medicine of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine supported by the subject of academic priority discipline of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (ZYX03KF058). This study was also partly supported by Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX23_2133 and SJCX23_0728).