Prevalence of miR146a Gene Polymorphisms in Diabetic and Non-diabetic Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Changes in pro-inflammatory cytokines are key mechanisms leading to kidney fibrosis. Among microRNAs, miR146 is well studied for its diverse roles in modulating immune responses and inflammation. This paper aims to study the prevalence of three functional miR146a gene polymorphisms (rs2910164 C/G, rs57095329 A/G, and rs6864584 T/C) in diabetic and non-diabetic patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). One hundred fifty CKD patients (73 men, 77 women, mean age 52.17 years) and 150 healthy controls participated in this case–control study. CKD patients were divided into a diabetic nephropathy group and a non-diabetic group. Genotyping was performed by PCR–RFLP and allele-specific-PCR techniques. We found that rs2910164 C/G and rs57095329 A/G polymorphisms significantly enhanced the risk of CKD under different genetic models. Besides, these variations were associated with increased CKD risk in diabetic and non-diabetic patients. On the contrary, the rs6864584 T/C variant was associated with a decreased risk of CKD in non-diabetic patients. There were no notable changes in p-values after adjustment for age, sex, and body mass index. Although no strong linkage was found between the studied variants. In the meantime, different haplotypes of miR146a polymorphisms were associated with enhanced risk of CKD. In summary, our findings provided evidence for the association of miR146a gene polymorphisms with CKD risk in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients. Further studies on different races with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm the current results.