Assessment of serum arginase I as a type 2 diabetes mellitus diagnosis biomarker in patients

Abstract

Previous studies have reported that levels of serum arginase I are increased in certain diseases. However, the exact association between arginase I and diabetes mellitus (DM) has yet to be determined. The aim of the present study was to investigate the correlation between arginase I activity and DM to determine whether arginase I activity may be used as a diagnostic biomarker for DM. DM was induced by a streptozotocin injection, while the arginase inhibitor, citrulline, was administered daily. Serum levels of glucose, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and arginase I activity were analyzed, and quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot analysis were performed to detect the mRNA and protein expression levels of arginase I, respectively. In addition, western blot analysis was used to determine the protein expression of the Tie 2 receptor. Pearson’s analysis was used to determine the correlation between arginase I activity and Tie 2 expression, while concordance analysis was performed using the Cohen’s test to obtain the Kappa statistic. The results demonstrated that serum arginase I activity levels in the rats with DM were significantly elevated compared with the control group, and positively correlated with the blood glucose levels. In addition, the blood glucose and ROS levels were increased significantly in the rats with DM. Arginase I mRNA and protein expression levels were significantly elevated in the diabetic rats when compared with the control group, and Tie 2 expression levels increased and were shown to correlate with arginase I activity in the diabetic rats. In addition, arginase I activity was shown to correlate with glucose intolerance and post-load glucose values. Good concordance was observed between arginase I activity and the clinical diagnosis for DM (κ=0.876; P<0.001). Therefore, the results indicated that arginase I may function as a diagnostic biomarker for DM rats model.

Serum exosomes mediate delivery of arginase 1 as a novel mechanism for endothelial dysfunction in diabetes

“…Meanwhile, Arg1 triggers the generation of reactive oxygen species (30). Besides, increased expression and activity of Arg1 were reported in the serum of diabetic patients, implying a potential value of serum Arg1 as a prognostic or diagnostic marker for diabetic vasculopathy (31,32). More importantly, we found that the Arg1 content in SExos was increased in diabetic patients compared with SExos from healthy subjects.…”

Oxidative stress biomarkers and their relationship with cytokine concentrations in overweight/obese pregnant women and their neonates

“…Conversely, Djordjevic et al found decreased SOD activity in diabetic pregnant women compared to normal pregnant women and non-pregnant women [32]. Arginase has been proposed as a diagnostic biomarker for diabetes mellitus in rat models and in human diabetic subjects because it correlates with blood glucose levels [33, 34]. In this study, we found that differences in arginase activity between diabetic and non-diabetic mothers disappeared when controlling for the effect of the use of metformin and insulin, showing that these may affect arginase activity, similar to a finding by Kashyap et al [34].…”

Hepatic proteomic analysis revealed altered metabolic pathways in insulin resistant Akt1 +/− /Akt2 −/− mice

“…While the animal model of insulin resistance utilized in this study is not widely studied, our approach did identify proteomic changes previously identified in other models of insulin resistance, diabetes and hepatocellular injury. In fact, several of the proteins we identified have previously been studied in humans as biomarkers of disease activity[65-67]. Importantly, it is becoming evident that biomarker panels comprised of several proteins can result in improved clinical management as they can have greater sensitivity, specificity and predictive value than a single biomarker[68, 69].…”