Molecular biomarkers in diabetes mellitus (DM)

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a growing epidemic metabolic syndrome, which affects near 5.6% of the world’s population. Almost 12% of health expenditure is dedicated to this disorder. Discovering and developing biomarkers as a practical guideline with high specificity and sensitivity for the diagnosis, prognosis, and clinical management of DM is one of the subjects of great interest among DM researchers due to the long-lasting asymptomatic clinical manifestation of DM. In this study, we described a recently identified molecular biomarker involved in DM.

This review study was done at the Diabetes Research Center affiliated to Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences.  PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Web of Science were searched using the following keywords: “diabetes mellitus”, “biomarker”, “microRNA”, “diagnostic tool” and “clinical manifestation.”

A total of 107 studies were finally included in this review. After evaluating numerous articles, including original, meta-analysis, and review studies, we focused on molecular biomarkers involved in DM diagnosis and management.

Increasing interest in biomarkers associated with DM goes back to its role in decreasing diabetes-related morbidity and mortality. This review focused on major molecular biomarkers such as proteomic and microRNA (miRNAs) as novel and interesting DM biomarkers that can help achieve timely diagnosis of DM.