Role of circulating miR-103a-3p in tibial cortex transverse transport treatment for diabetic foot ulcers

Objective: We performed bioinformatics analysis and RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of peripheral blood samples of patients with diabetic foot treated with tibial cortex transverse transport (TTT) to elucidate the mechanism through which TTT promotes angiogenesis.Research design and methods: MicroRNA expression data were obtained through RNA high-throughput sequencing. Differentially expressed genes were identified with DESeq2 and subjected to Gene Ontology functional enrichment analysis and KEGG pathway analysis using Enrichr. Finally, independent clinical samples were subjected to real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction to validate the RNA-seq results.Results: miR-103a-3p, with significant differential expression, was found to be mainly related to vascular budding, cell metabolism, and the AMPK signaling pathway. The predicted target hub genes of miR-103a-3p were AGO1, CDK6, TNRC6B, DICER1, CAPZA2, KIF23, KIF5A, MTMR3, MTMR4, and PIK3R1. Verification of the clinical sample results showed that the expression of miR-103a-3p was increased 30 days after surgery compared with the patients who did not undergo surgery.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that miR-103a-3p may be an effective small RNA biomarker for the treatment of patients with diabetic foot using TTT.